Respect

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Respect
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
First published Wed Sep 10, 2003; substantive revision Tue Feb 4, 2014
Respect has great importance in everyday life. As children we are taught (one hopes) to respect our parents,
teachers, and elders, school rules and traffic laws, family and cultural traditions, other people's feelings and
rights, our country's flag and leaders, the truth and people's differing opinions. And we come to value respect
for such things; when we're older, we may shake our heads (or fists) at people who seem not to have learned
to respect them. We develop great respect for people we consider exemplary and lose respect for those we
discover to be clay-footed, and so we may try to respect only those who are truly worthy of our respect. We
may also come to believe that, at some level, all people are worthy of respect. We may learn that jobs and
relationships become unbearable if we receive no respect in them; in certain social milieus we may learn the
price of disrespect if we violate the street law: “Diss me, and you die.” Calls to respect this or that are
increasingly part of public life: environmentalists exhort us to respect nature, foes of abortion and capital
punishment insist on respect for human life, members of racial and ethnic minorities and those discriminated
against because of their gender, sexual orientation, age, religious beliefs, or economic status demand respect
both as social and moral equals and for their cultural differences. And it is widely acknowledged that public
debates about such demands should take place under terms of mutual respect. We may learn both that our
lives together go better when we respect the things that deserve to be respected and that we should respect
some things independently of considerations of how our lives would go.
We may also learn that how our lives go depends every bit as much on whether we respect ourselves. The
value of self-respect may be something we can take for granted, or we may discover how very important it is
when our self-respect is threatened, or we lose it and have to work to regain it, or we have to struggle to
develop or maintain it in a hostile environment. Some people find that finally being able to respect
themselves is what matters most about getting off welfare, kicking a disgusting habit, or defending
something they value; others, sadly, discover that life is no longer worth living if self-respect is irretrievably
lost. It is part of everyday wisdom that respect and self-respect are deeply connected, that it is difficult if not
impossible both to respect others if we don't respect ourselves and to respect ourselves if others don't respect
us. It is increasingly part of political wisdom both that unjust social institutions can devastatingly damage
self-respect and that robust and resilient self-respect can be a potent force in struggles against injustice.
The ubiquity and significance of respect and self-respect in everyday life largely explains why philosophers,
particularly in moral and political philosophy, have been interested in these two concepts. They turn up in a
multiplicity of philosophical contexts, including discussions of justice and equality, injustice and oppression,
autonomy and agency, moral and political rights and duties, moral motivation and moral development,
cultural diversity and toleration, punishment and political violence. The concepts are also invoked in
bioethics, environmental ethics, business ethics, workplace ethics, and a host of other applied ethics contexts.
Although a wide variety of things are said to deserve respect, contemporary philosophical interest in respect
has overwhelmingly been focused on respect for persons, the idea that all persons should be treated with
respect simply because they are persons. Respect for persons is a central concept in many ethical theories;
some theories treat it as the very essence of morality and the foundation of all other moral duties and
obligations. This focus owes much to the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who argued that
all and only persons (i.e., rational autonomous agents) and the moral law they autonomously legislate are
appropriate objects of the morally most significant attitude of respect. Although honor, esteem, and
prudential regard played important roles in moral and political theories before him, Kant was the first major
Western philosopher to put respect for persons, including oneself as a person, at the very center of moral
theory, and his insistence that persons are ends in themselves with an absolute dignity who must always be
respected has become a core ideal of modern humanism and political liberalism. In recent years many people

have argued that moral respect ought also to be extended to things other than persons, such as nonhuman
living things and the natural environment.
Despite the widespread acknowledgment of the importance of respect and self-respect in moral and political
life and theory, there is no settled agreement in either everyday thinking or philosophical discussion about
such issues as how to understand the concepts, what the appropriate objects of respect are, what is involved
in respecting various objects, what the conditions are for self-respect, and what the scope is of any moral
requirements regarding respect and self-respect. This entry will survey these and related issues.


1. The Concept of Respect
o 1.1 Elements of respect
o 1.2 Kinds of Respect



2. Respect for Persons
o 2.1 Some important issues
o 2.2 Kant's Account of Respect for Persons
o 2.3 Further issues, developments, and applications



3. Respect for Nature and Other Nonpersons



4. Self-Respect
o 4.1 The concept of self-respect
o 4.2 Treatment of self-respect in moral and political philosophy



5. Conclusion



Bibliography
o Philosophical works chiefly on respect and related concepts
o Philosophical works chiefly on self-respect and related concepts



Academic Tools



Other Internet Resources



Related Entries

1. The Concept of Respect

Among the main questions about respect that philosophers have addressed are these: (1) How should respect
in general be understood? (a) What category of thing is it? Philosophers have variously identified it as a
mode of behavior, a form of treatment, a kind of valuing, a type of attention, a motive, an attitude, a feeling,
a tribute, a principle, a duty, an entitlement, a moral virtue, an epistemic virtue: are any of these categories
more central than others? (b) What are the distinctive elements of respect? (c) To what other attitudes,
actions, valuings, duties, etc. is respect similar, and with what does it contrast? (d) What beliefs, attitudes,
emotions, motives, and conduct does respect involve, and with what is it incompatible? (2) What are the
appropriate objects of respect, i.e., the sorts of things that can be reasonably said to warrant respect? (3)
What are the bases or grounds for respect, i.e., the features of or facts about objects in virtue of which it is
reasonable and perhaps obligatory to respect them? (4) What ways of acting and forbearing to act express or
constitute or are regulated by respect? (5) What moral requirements, if any, are there to respect certain types
of objects, and what is the scope and theoretical status of such requirements? (6) Are there different levels or
degrees of respect? Can an object come to deserve less or no respect? (7) Why is respect morally important?
What, if anything, does it add to morality over and above the conduct, attitudes, and character traits required
or encouraged by various moral principles or virtues? (8) What are the implications of respect for
problematic moral and sociopolitical issues such as racism and sexism, pornography, privacy, punishment,
responses to terrorism, paternalism in health care contexts, cultural diversity, affirmative action, abortion,
and so on?

1.1 Elements of respect
It is widely acknowledged that there are different kinds of respect, which complicates the answering of these
questions. For example, answers concerning one kind of respect can diverge significantly from those about
another kind. Much philosophical work has gone into explicating differences and links among the various
kinds. One general distinction is between respect simply as behavior and respect as an attitude or feeling
which may or may not be expressed in or signified by behavior. We might speak of drivers respecting the
speed limit, hostile forces as respecting a cease fire agreement, or AIDS as not respecting national borders,
and in such cases we can be referring simply to behavior which avoids violation of or interference with some
boundary, limit, or rule, without any reference to attitudes, feelings, intentions, or dispositions, and even, as
in the case of the AIDS virus, without imputing agency (Bird 2004). In such cases the behavior is regarded as
constitutive of respecting. In other cases, we take respect to be or to express or signify an attitude or feeling,
as when we speak of having respect for another person or for nature or of certain behaviors as showing
respect or disrespect. In what follows, I will focus chiefly on respect as attitude or feeling. There are, again,
several different attitudes or feelings to which the term “respect” refers. Before looking at differences,
however, it is useful first to note some elements common among varieties.
An attitude of respect is, most generally, a relation between a subject and an object in which the subject
responds to the object from a certain perspective in some appropriate way. Respect necessarily has an object:
respect is always directed toward, paid to, felt about, shown for some object. While a very wide variety of
things can be appropriate objects of one kind of respect or another, the subject of respect (the respecter) is
always a person, that is, a conscious rational being capable of recognizing and acknowledging things, of selfconsciously and intentionally responding to them, of having and expressing values with regard to them, and
of being accountable for disrespecting or failing to respect them. Though animals may love or fear us, only
persons can respect and disrespect us or anything else. Respect is a responsive relation, and ordinary
discourse about respect identifies several key elements of the response, including attention, deference,
judgment, acknowledgment, valuing, and behavior. First, as suggested by its derivation from the Latin
respicere, which means “to look back at” or “to look again,” respect is a particular mode of apprehending the
object: the person who respects something pays attention to it and perceives it differently from someone who
does not and responds to it in light of that perception. This perceptual element is common also to synonyms
such as regard (from “to watch out for”) and consideration (“examine (the stars) carefully”). The idea of
paying heed or giving proper attention to the object which is central to respect often means trying to see the
object clearly, as it really is in its own right, and not seeing it solely through the filter of one's own desires

and fears or likes and dislikes. Thus, respecting something contrasts with being oblivious or indifferent to it,
ignoring or quickly dismissing it, neglecting or disregarding it, or carelessly or intentionally misidentifying
it. An object can be perceived by a subject from a variety of perspectives; for example, one might rightly
regard another human individual as a rights-bearer, a judge, a superlative singer, a trustworthy person, or a
threat to one's security. The respect one accords her in each case will be different, yet all will involve
attention to her as she really is as a judge, threat, etc. It is in virtue of this aspect of careful attention that
respect is sometimes thought of as an epistemic virtue.
As responsive, respect is object-generated rather than wholly subject-generated, something that is owed to,
called for, deserved, elicited, or claimed by the object. We respect something not because we want to but
because we recognize that we have to respect it (Wood 1999); respect involves “a deontic experience”—the
experience that one must pay attention and respond appropriately (Birch 1993). It thus is motivational: it is
the recognition of something “as directly determining our will without reference to what is wanted by our
inclinations” (Rawls 2000, 153). In this way respect differs from, for example, liking and fearing, which
have their sources in the subject's interests or desires. When we respect something, we heed its call, accord it
its due, acknowledge its claim to our attention. Thus, respect involves deference, in the most basic sense of
yielding: self-absorption and egocentric concerns give way to consideration of the object, one's motives or
feelings submit to the object's reality, one is disposed to act in obedience to the object's demands.
At the same time, respect is also an expression of agency: it is deliberate, a matter of directed rather than
grabbed attention, of reflective consideration and judgment. In particular, the subject judges that the object is
due, deserves, or rightfully claims a certain response in virtue of some feature of or fact about the object that
warrants that response. This feature or fact is the ground or basis in the object, that in virtue of which it calls
for respect. The basis gives us a reason to respect the object; it may also indicate more precisely how to
respect it. Respect is thus reason-governed: we cannot respect a particular object for just any old reason or
for no reason at all. Rather, we respect an object for the reason that it has, in our judgment, some respectwarranting characteristic, that it is, in our view, the kind of object that calls for that kind of response (Cranor
1975; but see Buss 1999 for disagreement). And these reasons are categorical, in the sense that their weight
or stringency does not depend on the subject's interests, goals, or desires; hence acting against these reasons,
other things equal, is wrong (Raz 2001). Respect is thus both subjective and objective. It is subjective in that
the subject's response is constructed from her understanding of the object and its characteristics and her
judgments about the legitimacy of its call and how fittingly to address the call. An individual's respect for an
object can thus be inappropriate or unwarranted, for the object may not have the features she takes it to have,
or the features she takes to be respect-warranting might not be, or her idea of how properly to treat the object
might be mistaken. But, as object-generated, the logic of respect is the logic of objectivity and universality,
in four ways. First, in respecting an object, we respond to it not as an extension of feelings, desires, and
interests we already have, but as something whose significance is independent of us. Second, we experience
the object as constraining our attitudes and actions. Third, our reasons for respecting something are, we
logically have to assume, reasons for other people to respect it (or at least to endorse our respect for it from a
common point of view). Respect is thus, unlike erotic or filial love, an impersonal response to the object.
Fourth, respect is universalizing, in the sense that if F is a respect-warranting feature of object O, then
respecting O on account of F commits us, other things equal, to respecting other things that also have feature
F. In respect, then, subjectivity defers to objectivity.
There are many different kinds of objects that can reasonably be respected and many different reasons why
they warrant respect; thus warranted responses can take different forms beyond attention, deference, and
judgment. Some things are dangerous or powerful and respect of them can involve fear, awe, self-protection,
or submission. Other things have authority over us and the respect they are due includes acknowledgment of
their authority and perhaps obedience to their authoritative commands. Other forms of respect are modes of
valuing, appreciating the object as having an objective worth or importance that is independent of, perhaps
even at variance with, our antecedent desires or commitments. Thus, we can respect things we don't like or
agree with, such as our enemies or someone else's opinion. Valuing respect is kin to esteem, admiration,

veneration, reverence, and honor, while regarding something as utterly worthless or insignificant or
disdaining or having contempt for it is incompatible with respecting it. Respect also aims to value its object
appropriately, so it contrasts with degradation and discounting. The kinds of valuing that respect involves
also contrast with other forms of valuing such as promoting or using (Anderson 1993, Pettit 1989). Indeed,
regarding a person merely as useful (treating her as just a sexual object, an ATM machine, a research subject)
is commonly identified as a central form of disrespect for persons, and many people decry the killing of
endangered wild animals for their tusks or hides as despicably disrespectful of nature. Respect is sometimes
identified as a feeling; it is typically the experiencing of something as valuable that is in focus in these cases.
Finally, respect is generally regarded as having a behavioral component. In respecting an object, we often
consider it to be making legitimate claims on our conduct as well as our thoughts and feelings and are
disposed to behave appropriately. Appropriate behavior includes refraining from certain treatment of the
object or acting only in particular ways in connection with it, ways that are regarded as fitting, deserved by,
or owed to the object. And there are very many ways to respect things: keeping our distance from them,
helping them, praising or emulating them, obeying or abiding by them, not violating or interfering with them,
destroying them in some ways rather than letting them be destroyed in others, protecting or being careful
with them, talking about them in ways that reflect their worth or status, mourning them, nurturing them. One
can behave in respectful ways, however, without having respect for the object, as when a teen who disdains
adults behaves respectfully toward her friend's parents in a scheme to get the car, manipulating rather than
respecting them. To be a form or expression of respect, behavior has to be motivated by one's
acknowledgment of the object as calling for that behavior, and it has to be motivated directly by
consideration that the object is what it is, without reference to one's own interests and desires. On the other
hand, certain kinds of feelings would not count as respect if they did not find expression in behavior or
involved no dispositions to behave in certain ways rather than others, and if they did not spring from the
beliefs, perceptions, and judgments that the object is worthy of or calls for such behavior.
The attitudes of respect, then, have cognitive dimensions (beliefs, acknowledgments, judgments,
deliberations, commitments), affective dimensions (emotions, feelings, ways of experiencing things), and
conative dimensions (motivations, dispositions to act and forbear from acting); some forms also have
valuational dimensions. The attitude is typically regarded as central to respect: actions and modes of
treatment typically count as respect insofar as they either manifest an attitude of respect or are of a sort
through which the attitude of respect is characteristically expressed; a principle of respect is one that,
logically, must be adopted by someone with the attitude of respect or that prescribes the attitude or actions
that express it (Frankena 1986, Downie and Telfer 1969).

1.2 Kinds of Respect
That it is the nature of the object that determines its respect-worthiness, and that there are different kinds of
objects calling for correspondingly different responses has led many philosophers to argue that there are
different kinds of respect. In what follows, three sets of distinctions will be discussed.
Speculating on the historical development of the idea that all persons as such deserve respect, and using
terms found in Kant's writings on Achtung (the German word usually translated as “respect”), Feinberg
(1975) identifies three distinct concepts for which “respect” has been the name. (1) Respekt, is the “uneasy
and watchful attitude that has 'the element of fear' in it” (1975,1). Its objects are dangerous things or things
with power over the subject. It is respekt that woodworkers are encouraged to have for power tools, that a
city dweller might have for street gangs, a new sailor might be admonished to have for the sea, a child might
have for an abusive parent. Respekt contrasts with contemptuous disregard; it is shown in conduct that is
cautious, self-protective, other-placating. (2) The second concept, observantia, is the moralized analogue of
respekt. It involves regarding the object as making a rightful claim on our conduct, as deserving moral
consideration in its own right, independently of considerations of personal well being. It is observantia,

Feinberg maintains, that historically was extended first to classes of non-dangerous but otherwise worthy
people and then to all persons as such, regardless of merit or ability. Observantia encompasses both the
respect said to be owed to all humans equally and the forms of polite respect and deference that acknowledge
different social positions. (3) Reverentia, the third concept, is the special feeling of profound awe and respect
we have in the presence of something extraordinary or sublime, a feeling that both humbles and uplifts us.
On Kant's account, the moral law and people who exemplify it in morally worthy actions elicit reverentia
from us, for we experience the law or its exemplification as “something that always trumps our inclinations
in determining our wills” (Feinberg 1975, 2). Feinberg sees different forms of power as underlying the three
kinds of respect; in each case, respect is the acknowledgment of the power of something other than ourselves
to demand, command, or make claims on our attention, consideration, and deference.
Hudson (1980) draws a four-fold distinction among kinds of respect, according to the bases in the objects.
Consider the following sets of examples: (a) respecting a colleague highly as a scholar and having a lot of
respect for someone with “guts”; (b) a mountain climber's respect for the elements and a tennis player's
respect for her opponent's strong backhand; (c) respecting the terms of an agreement and respecting a
person's rights; and (d) showing respect for a judge by rising when she enters the courtroom and respecting a
worn-out flag by burning it rather than tossing it in the trash. The respect in (a), evaluative respect, is similar
to other favorable attitudes such as esteem and admiration; it is earned or deserved (or not) depending on
whether and to the degree that the object is judged to meet certain standards. Obstacle respect, in (b), is a
matter of regarding the object as something that, if not taken proper account of in one's decisions about how
to act, could prevent one from achieving one's ends. The objects of (c) directive respect are directives: things
such as requests, rules, advice, laws, or rights claims that may be taken as guides to action. One respects a
directive when one's behaviors intentionally comply with it. The objects of (d) institutional respect are social
institutions or practices, the positions or roles defined within an institution or practice, and persons or things
that occupy the positions or represent the institution. Institutional respect is shown by behavior that conforms
to rules that prescribe certain conduct as respectful. These four forms of respect differ in several ways. Each
identifies a quite different kind of feature of objects as the basis of respect. Each is expressed in action in
quite different ways, although evaluative respect need not be expressed at all, one can have institutional
respect for an institution (e.g., the criminal justice system) without showing it for a particular element of it
(the judge in this trial), and directive respect is not an attitude that one might or might not express but a mode
of conduct motivated by a recognition of the directive's authority. Evaluative respect centrally involves
having a favorable attitude toward the object, while the other forms do not. Directive respect does not admit
of degrees (one either obeys the rule or doesn't), but the others do (we can have more evaluative respect for
one person than another). Hudson uses this distinction to argue that respect for persons is not a unique kind
of respect but should be conceived rather as involving some combination or other of these four.
To Hudson's four-fold classification, Dillon (1992a) adds a fifth form, care respect, which is exemplified in
an environmentalist's deep respect for nature. Care respect involves regarding the object as having profound
and perhaps unique value and so cherishing it, and perceiving it as fragile or calling for special care and so
acting or forbearing to act out of felt benevolent concern for it. This analysis of respect draws explicitly from
a feminist ethics of care and has been influential in feminist and non-feminist discussions of respecting
persons as unique, particular individuals.
Darwall (1977) distinguishes two kinds of respect: recognition respect and appraisal respect. Recognition
respect is the disposition to give appropriate weight or consideration in one's practical deliberations to some
fact about the object and to regulate one's conduct by constraints derived from that fact. (Frankena 1986 and
Cranor 1982, 1983 refer to this as “consideration respect.”) A wide variety of objects can be objects of
recognition respect, including laws, dangerous things, someone's feelings, social institutions, nature, the
selves individuals present in different contexts, and persons as such. Appraisal respect, by contrast, is an
attitude of positive appraisal of a person or their merits, which are features of persons that manifest
excellences of character. Individuals can be the objects of appraisal respect either as persons or as engaged in
some pursuit or occupying some role. Evaluation is always done in light of some qualitative standards, and

different standards can apply to one and the same individual. Thus, appraisal respect is a matter of degree,
depending on the extent to which the object meets the standards (so, we can respect someone more or less
highly and respect one person more highly than another), and it can co-exist with (some) negative
assessments of an individual or her traits (judged in light of other standards). We can have appraisal respect
for someone's honesty even while thinking her lazy, and we can highly respect someone else as altogether a
morally fine person; we can respect an individual as an excellent teacher or carpenter yet regard her as far
from a moral exemplar. Darwall (1977) distinguishes appraisal respect, which is based on assessment of
character traits, from esteem, another attitude of positive assessment whose wider basis include any features
in virtue of which one can think well of someone. However, other philosophers treat “esteem” and
(appraisal) “respect” as synonyms, and Darwall (2004) calls appraisal respect a form of esteem.
The recognition/appraisal distinction has been quite influential and is widely regarded as the fundamental
distinction. If it is, then it should encompass the other distinctions (although some fine-tuning might be
necessary). And indeed, evaluative respect and perhaps reverentia for morally good persons are essentially
the same as appraisal respect, while respekt, obstacle respect, observantia, directive respect, institutional
respect, and care respect can be analyzed as forms of recognition respect. Some philosophers, however, have
found the recognition/appraisal distinction to be inadequate. Neither reverentia for the moral law nor the felt
experience of reverential respect for the sublimity of persons as such (Buss 1999) are forms of appraisal
respect, yet because recognition respect is analyzed, first, as holding only in deliberative contexts, and
second, as not essentially involving feeling, reverentia seems also not to be a form of recognition respect.
Moreover, while valuing the object is not part of Darwall's analysis of recognition respect—and it is not
essential to some forms of recognition respect (e.g., directive respect) and is only indirectly involved in other
forms (in obstacle respect, we don't value the obstacle but do value the goal it blocks us from reaching)—
valuing is essential to some forms of respect that are not appraisal respect. In particular, valuing persons
intrinsically is widely regarded as the heart of the respect that all persons are thought to be owed simply as
persons. However, it is not sufficient simply to gloss recognition respect as recognizing the value of the
object, for one can recognize the value of something and yet not value it, as an insurance appraiser does, or
take the value of something, say, a person's child, into account in deliberating about how best to revenge
oneself on that person. Respect for some categories of objects is not just a matter of taking the object's value
into consideration but of valuing the object, and valuing it intrinsically. Analyzing appraisal respect as just
the positive assessment of someone's character traits as good is similarly problematic, for one can evaluate
something highly and yet not value it. For example, one can appraise someone's moral performance as stellar
and hate or envy her for precisely that reason. Respect in the appraisal sense is not just evaluating but also
valuing the object positively. The recognition/appraisal distinction thus seems to obscure another very
important distinction between what we might call valuing respect and non-valuing respect. Appraisal respect
is a form of valuing respect, but recognition respect includes both valuing and non-valuing forms. There are,
of course, different modes of valuing, and at least three distinctions are relevant to respect: (a) between moral
and non-moral valuing (or, valuing from a moral or a nonmoral point of view), (b) between comparative and
non-comparative valuing, and (c) between valuing intrinsically (valuing it in itself, apart from valuing
anything else) and valuing extrinsically (for example, because of its relation to something else of value)
(Anderson 1993). A complete account of respect would need to work out a taxonomy that incorporates these
valuing distinctions.
In the rest of this article, I will discuss respect and self-respect using Darwall's term “recognition respect,”
Hudson's term “evaluative respect,” and Feinberg's “reverential respect” (the last for the valuing feeling that
is motivational without being deliberative), specifying the valuing dimensions as necessary.
In everyday discourse, the valuing sense of respect, especially when used about people, most commonly
means thinking highly of someone, i.e., evaluative respect. However, philosophical attention to respect has
tended to focus on recognition (or, sometimes, reverential) respect that acknowledges or values the object
from a moral point of view. These discussions tend to relate such respect to the concepts of moral standing or
moral worth. Moral standing, or moral considerability, is the idea that certain things matter morally in their

own right and so are appropriate objects of direct fundamental moral consideration or concern (Birch 1993,
P. Taylor 1986). Some form of recognition respect is, on some accounts, a primary mode of such moral
consideration. Alternatively, it is argued that certain things have a distinctive kind of intrinsic and
incomparable moral worth or value, often called “dignity,” in virtue of which they ought to be accorded some
valuing form of moral recognition or reverential respect. Discussions that focus on moral standing or moral
worth address questions such as: What things fall within the domain of basic moral consideration or have this
distinctive moral worth? What confers moral standing on objects, or what is the basis of their moral worth?
Are there different levels of moral standing and, if so, do objects at different levels warrant different modes
of moral respect? And what sorts of treatment are constitutive of, express, or are compatible with such moral
respect? In modern philosophical discussions, humans are universally regarded as the paradigm objects of
moral respect; if anything has moral standing or dignity and so warrants respect, it is the individual human
being. Although some theorists argue that nature (or, all living beings, species, ecosystems) or societies (or,
cultures, traditions) also warrant the moral consideration and valuing of respect, most philosophical
discussion of respect has focused on respect for persons.

2. Respect for Persons
People can be the objects or recipients of different forms of respect. We can (directive) respect a person's
legal rights, show (institutional) respect for the president by calling him “Mr. President,” have a healthy
(obstacle) respect (respekt) for an easily angered person, (care) respect someone by cherishing her in her
concrete particularity, (evaluatively) respect an individual for her commitment to a worthy project, and
accord one person the same basic moral respect we think any person deserves. Thus the idea of respect for
persons is ambiguous. Because both institutional respect and evaluative respect can be for persons in roles or
position, the phrase “respecting someone as an R” might mean either having high regard for a person's
excellent performance in the role or behaving in ways that express due consideration or deference to an
individual qua holder of that position. Similarly, the phrase “respecting someone as a person” might refer to
appraising her as overall a morally good person, or to acknowledging her standing as an equal in the moral
community, or to attending to her as the particular person she is as opposed to treating her like just another
body. In the literature of moral and political philosophy, the notion of respect for persons commonly means a
kind of respect that all people are owed morally just because they are persons, regardless of social position,
individual characteristics or achievements, or moral merit. The idea is that persons as such have a distinctive
moral status in virtue of which we have special categorical obligations to regard and treat them in ways that
are constrained by certain inviolable limits. This is sometimes expressed in terms of rights: persons, it is said,
have a fundamental moral right to respect simply because they are persons. And it is a commonplace that
persons are owed or have a right to equal respect. It is obvious that we could not owe every individual
evaluative respect, let alone equal evaluative respect, since not everyone acts morally correctly or has an
equally morally good character. So, if it is true that all persons are owed or have a moral right to respect just
as persons, then the concept of respect for person has to be analyzed as some form or combination of forms
of recognition or reverential respect. For a variety of reasons, however, it is controversial whether we do
indeed have a moral obligation to respect all persons, regardless of merit, and if so, why. There are
disagreements, for example, about the scope of this claim, the grounds for respect, and the justification for
the obligation. There is also a divergence of views about the kinds of treatment that are respectful of persons.

2.1 Some important issues
One source of controversy concerns the scope of the concept of a person. Although in everyday discourse the
word “person” is synonymous with “human being,” some philosophical discussions treat it as a technical
term whose range of application might be wider than the class of human beings (just as, for legal purposes,
business corporations are regarded as persons). This is because some of the reasons that have been given for
respecting persons have the logical consequence that non-human things warrant the same respect on the very
same grounds as humans. Consequently, one question an account of respect for persons has to address is:

Who or what are persons that are owed respect? Different answers have been offered, including all human
beings; all and only those humans who are themselves capable of respecting persons; all beings capable of
rational activity, whether human or not; all beings capable of functioning as moral agents, whether human or
not. The second, third and fourth answers would seem to exclude deceased humans and humans who lack
sufficient mental capacity, such as the profoundly retarded, the severely mentally ill and senile, those in
persistent vegetative states, the pre-born, and perhaps very young children. The third and fourth answers
might include artificial beings (androids, sophisticated robots), spiritual beings (gods, angels), extraterrestrial
beings, and certain animals (apes, dolphins).
In trying to clarify who or what we are obligated to respect, we are naturally led to a question about the
ground or basis of respect: What is it about persons that makes them matter morally and makes them worthy
of respect? One common way of answer this question is to look for some morally significant natural quality
that is common to all beings that are noncontroversially owed respect (for example, all normal adult
humans). Candidate qualities include the ability to be moved by considerations of moral obligation, the
ability to value appropriately, the ability to reason, and the ability to engage in reciprocal relationships. Some
of these apply only to humans, others to other beings as well. Even regarding humans, there is a question of
scope: Are all humans owed respect? If respect is something to which all human beings have an equal claim,
then, it has been argued, the ground quality has to be one that all humans possess equally or in virtue of
which humans are naturally equal, or a threshold quality that all humans possess, with variations above the
threshold ignored. Some philosophers have argued that certain capacities fit the bill; others argue that there is
no quality possessed by all humans that could be a plausible ground for a moral obligation of equal respect.
Some draw from this the conclusion that respect is owed not to all but only to some human beings; others
conclude that the obligation to respect all humans is groundless: rather than being grounded in some fact
about humans, respect confers moral standing on them. But the last view still leaves the questions: why
should this standing be conferred on humans? And is it conferred on all humans? Yet another question of
scope is: Must persons always be respected? One view is that individuals forfeit their claim to respect by, for
example, committing heinous crimes of disrespect against other persons, such as murder in the course of
terrorism or genocide. Another view is that there are no circumstances under which it is morally justifiable to
not respect a person, and that even torturers and child-rapists, though they may deserve the most severe
condemnation and punishment and may have forfeited their rights to freedom and perhaps to life, still remain
persons to whom we have obligations of respect, since the grounds of respect are independent of moral merit
or demerit.
Beyond the question of the ground or basis of respect for persons, there is a further question of justification
to be addressed, for it is one thing to say that persons have a certain valuable quality, but quite another thing
to say that there is a moral obligation to respect persons. So we must ask: What reasons do we have for
believing that the fact that persons possess quality X entails that we are morally obligated to respect persons
by treating them in certain ways? (Hill 1997). Another way of asking a justification question seeks not a
normative connection between qualities of persons and moral obligation, but an explanation for our belief
that humans (and perhaps other beings) are owed respect, for example: What in our experience of other
humans or in our evolutionary history explains the development and power of this belief? Our actual felt
experiences of reverential respect play a significant role in some of these explanatory accounts; what justifies
accepting our experience of respect for humans (or other beings) as grounds for an obligation is its coherence
with our other moral beliefs (Buss 1999, Margalit 1996, Gibbard 1990).
Finally, there are questions about how we are supposed to respect persons, such as: What standards for
conduct and character give appropriate expression to the attitude of respect? Some philosophers argue that
the obligation to respect person functions as a negative constraint: respect involves refraining from regarding
or treating persons in certain ways. For example, we ought not to treat them as if they were worthless or had
value only insofar as we find them useful or interesting, or as if they were mere objects or specimens, or as if
they were vermin or dirt; we ought not to violate their basic moral rights, or interfere with their efforts to
make their own decisions and govern their own conduct, or humiliate them, or treat them in ways that flout

their nature and worth as persons. Others maintain that we also have positive duties of respect: we ought, for
example, to try to see each of them and the world from their own points of view, or help them to promote
their morally acceptable ends, or protect them from their own self-harming decisions. And some
philosophers note that it may be more respectful to judge someone's actions or character negatively or to
punish someone for wrongdoing than to treat them as if they were not responsible for what they did, although
requirements of respect would impose limits on how such judgments may be expressed and how persons
may be punished. Another question is whether treating people with respect requires treating them equally.
One view is that the equality of persons entails equal treatment; another view is that equal treatment would
involve failing to respect the important differences among persons. On the latter view, it is respectful to deal
with each individual impartially and exclusively on the basis of whatever aspects of the individual or the
situation are relevant (Frankfurt 1999).

2.2 Kant's Account of Respect for Persons
The most influential position on these issues is found in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1785,
1788, 1797). Indeed, most contemporary discussions of respect for persons explicitly claim to rely on,
develop, or challenge some aspect of Kant's ethics. Central to Kant's ethical theory is the claim that all
persons are owed respect just because they are persons, that is, free rational beings. To be a person is to have
a status and worth that is unlike that of any other kind of being: it is to be an end in itself with dignity. And
the only response that is appropriate to such a being is respect. Respect (that is, moral recognition respect) is
the acknowledgment in attitude and conduct of the dignity of persons as ends in themselves. Respect for such
beings is not only appropriate but also morally and unconditionally required: the status and worth of persons
is such that they must always be respected. Because we are all too often inclined not to respect persons, not
to value them as they ought to be valued, one formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which is the
supreme principle of morality, commands that our actions express due respect for the worth of persons: “Act
in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or the person of any other, never simply
as a means but always at the same time as an end” (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Groundwork of
the Metaphysics of Morals) (1785/1996, 4:429). Our fundamental moral obligation, then, is to respect
persons; morally right actions are thus those that express respect for persons as ends in themselves, while
morally wrong actions are those that express disrespect or contempt for persons by not valuing them as ends
in themselves (Wood 1999). In addition to this general commandment, Kant argues that there are also more
specific duties of respect for other persons and self-respect, to which we'll return. For now, we must address
the question, What is it to be an end in itself and to possess dignity?
The concept of an end has several meanings for Kant. In one sense, to be an end is to have some kind of
value or worth. Most things have value as the objects of our desires, interests, or affections; they are the ends
we pursue or produce, our subjective ends. But the worth of an end in itself is worth that is not relative to,
conditional on, or derived from being the object of anyone's desires or affections. Rather, its worth is
intrinsic to it, unconditional, incomparable, and objective. Kant calls this distinctive worth which only ends
in themselves possess “dignity.” In Kant's theory of value dignity is the supreme value; thus ends in
themselves are to be valued morally above all other entities. Kant argues that rational beings are the only
entities that are ends in themselves and that all rational beings are ends in themselves. The term “person”
means a being whose rational nature “already marks them out as ends in themselves…and an object of
respect” (Groundwork 4: 428). In arguing for respect for the dignity of persons, Kant explicitly rejects two
other conceptions of human value: the aristocratic idea of honor that individuals differentially deserve
according to their social rank, individual accomplishments, or moral virtue (see Berger 1983 for a discussion
of the aristocratic dimensions of honor), and the view, baldly expressed by Hobbes, that:
… the value or worth of a man is, as of all other things, his price—that is to say, so much as would be given
for the use of his power—and therefore is not absolute but a thing dependent on the need and judgment of
another. (Hobbes 1651/1958, 79)

In Die Metaphysik der Sitten (The Metaphysics of Morals) (1797) Kant grants that if we think of humans as
merely one kind of animal among others “in the system of nature,” we can ascribe a price to them, an
extrinsic value that depends on their usefulness; but, he argues,
a human being regarded as a person, that is, as the subject of morally practical reason, is exalted above all
price…as an end in himself he possesses a dignity by which he exacts respect for himself from all other
beings in the world. (MM, 6: 434–435)
Against the aristocratic view Kant argues that although individuals as members of some social community or
other may have or lack meritorious accomplishment or status or may deserve honor (or evaluative respect) to
different degrees or not at all, all persons as members of the moral community, the community of all and
only ends in themselves, are owed the same (moral recognition) respect, for the dignity that they possesses as
rational is unconditional and independent of all other facts about or features of them. Dignity is also
incomparable worth: it can't be compared with, exchanged for, or replaced by any other value, whereas the
very purpose of a price is to establish comparative value. And dignity is absolute or objective worth, which
means that it is a value that everyone has compelling reason to acknowledge, regardless of their antecedent
desires, interests, or affections. This brings us to a second sense in which persons are ends in themselves. For
“end” can also mean a limit or constraint on action (as the end of the road puts a limit on our our travel). The
rational nature of persons “constitutes the supreme limiting condition of the freedom of action of every
human being” (Groundwork, 4: 431); it puts an absolute limit on how we can treat them. In particular, they
must never be treated merely as means, as things that we may use however we want in order to advance our
interests, and they must always be treated as the supremely valuable beings that they are. Note that it is not
wrong to treat persons as means to our ends; indeed we could not get along in life if we could not make use
of the talents, abilities, service, and labor of other people. What we must not do is to treat persons as mere
means to our ends, to treat them as if the only value they have is what derives from their usefulness to us. We
must always treat them “at the same time as an end.” To respect persons is thus to regard them as absolutely,
unconditionally, and incomparably valuable, to value them in themselves and not just in comparison to others
or insofar as they are valuable to someone or could be useful as a means for furthering some purpose, and to
acknowledge in a practical way that their dignity imposes absolute constraints on our treatment of them.
As the Categorical Imperative indicates, it is humanity in persons, strictly speaking, that has dignity; that is,
it is in virtue of the humanity in them that people are and so ought to be treated as ends in themselves.
Commentators generally identify humanity (that which makes us distinctively human beings and sets us
apart from all other animal species) with two closely related aspects of rationality: the capacity to set ends
and the capacity to be autonomous, both of which are capacities to be a moral agent (for example, Wood
1999, Korsgaard 1996, Hill 1997). The capacity to set ends, which is the power of rational choice, is the
capacity to value things through rational judgment: to determine, under the influence of reason independently
of antecedent instincts or desires, that something is valuable or important, that it is worth seeking or valuing.
It is also, thereby, the capacity to value ends in themselves, and so it includes the capacity for respect
(Velleman 1999). The capacity to be autonomous is the capacity to be self-legislating and self-governing,
that is, (a) the capacity to legislate moral laws that are valid for all rational beings through one's rational
willing by recognizing, using reason alone, what counts as a moral obligation, and (b) the capacity then to
freely resolve to act in accordance with moral laws because they are self-imposed by one's own reason and
not because one is compelled to act by any forces external to one's reason and will, including one's own
desires and inclinations. The capacity to be autonomous is thus also the capacity to freely direct, shape, and
determine the meaning of one's own life, and it is the condition for moral responsibility. But why does the
possession of these capacities make persons ends in themselves? Kant argues that moral principles must be
categorical imperatives, which is to say that they must be rational requirements to which we are
unconditionally subject, regardless of whatever inclinations, interests, goals, or projects we might have. But
there could be categorical imperatives only if there is something of absolute worth. Only persons have this
kind of worth, and they have it because the capacity to set ends, or to confer value on things, is the source of
all objective value (as Korsgaard 1996 and Wood 1999 have argued), and the capacity for autonomy is the

source, on the one hand, both of the obligatoriness of moral law and of responsible moral actions, and on the
other, of all realized human goodness. As the sources of all value and of morality itself, then, these rational
capacities are the basis of the absolute worth or dignity of rational beings. Kant maintains that all rational
beings necessarily attribute this value to themselves and that they must, on reflection, acknowledge that
every other rational being has the same value and on the same grounds: because of the rational nature that is
common to all persons. It is thus not as members of the biological species homo sapiens that we have dignity
and so are owed moral recognition respect, but as rational beings who are capable of moral agency.
There are several important consequences of this view regarding the scope of recognition respect for persons.
First, while all normally functioning human beings possess the rational capacities that ground recognition
respect, there can be humans in whom these capacities are altogether absent and who therefore, on this view,
are not persons and are not owed respect. Second, these capacities may be possessed by beings who are not
biologically human, and such beings would also be persons with dignity whom we are morally obligated to
respect. Third, because dignity is an absolute worth grounded in the rational capacities for morality, it is in
no way conditional on how well or badly those capacities are exercised, on whether a person acts morally or
has a morally good character or not. Thus, dignity cannot be diminished or lost through vice or morally bad
action, nor can it be increased through virtue or morally correct action. Because personhood and dignity are
not matters of degree, neither is the recognition respect owed to persons. Once a person, always a person
(barring, say, brain death), and so individuals cannot forfeit dignity or the right to recognition respect no
matter what they do. It follows that even the morally worst individuals must still be regarded as ends in
themselves and treated with respect. Of course, wrongdoing may call for punishment and may be grounds for
forfeiting certain rights, but it is not grounds for losing dignity or for regarding the wrongdoer as worthless
scum. Recognition respect is not something individuals have to earn or might fail to earn, but something they
are owed simply because they are rational beings. Finally, because dignity is absolute and incomparable, the
worth of all rational beings is equal. Thus the morally worst persons have the same dignity as the morally
best persons, although the former, we might say, fail to live up to their dignity. What grounds dignity is
something that all persons have in common, not something that distinguishes one individual from another.
Thus each person is to be respected as an equal among equals, without consideration of their individual
achievements or failures, social rank, moral merit or demerit, or any feature other than their common rational
nature. However, the equality of all rational beings does not entail that each person must be treated the same
as every other persons, nor does it entail that persons cannot also be differentially evaluated and valued in
other ways for their particular qualities, accomplishments, merit, or usefulness. But such valuing and
treatment must always be constrained by the moral requirement to accord recognition respect to persons as
ends in themselves.
In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant develops the implications of this view of persons as ends in themselves.
In his doctrine of justice he argues that persons, by virtue of their rational nature, are bearers of fundamental
rights, including the innate right to freedom, which must be respected by other persons and by social
institutions. The dignity of persons also imposes limits on permissible reasons for and forms of legal
punishment. In his doctrine of virtue, Kant discusses specific moral duties of recognition respect for other
persons, as well as duties of self-respect, to which we'll return below. Here, Kant explicitly invokes the
notion of respect as observantia. We have no moral duty to feel respect for others, he holds, for we cannot
have a moral duty to have any feeling, since feelings are not directly controllable by our will. Rather, the
respect we owe others is “to be understood as the maxim of limiting our self-esteem by the dignity of
humanity in another person, and so as respect in the practical sense” (MM, 6:449). This duty of recognition
respect owed to others requires two things: first, that we adopt as a regulating policy a commitment to
control our own desire to think well of ourselves (this desire being the main cause of disrespect), and,
second, that we refrain from treating others in the following ways: treating them merely as means (valuing
them as less than ends in themselves), showing contempt for them (denying that they have any worth),
treating them arrogantly (demanding that they value us more highly than they value themselves), defaming
them by publicly exposing their faults, and ridiculing or mocking them. We also have duties of love to

others, and Kant argues that in friendship respect and love, which naturally pull in opposite directions,
achieve a perfect balance.
Subsequent work in a Kantian vein on the duty of respect for others has expanded the list of ways that we are
morally required by respect to treat persons. In particular, although Kant says that the duties of recognition
respect are strictly negative, consisting in not engaging in certain conduct or having certain attitudes, many
philosophers have argued that respecting others involves positive actions and attitudes as well. The
importance of autonomy and agency in Kant's moral philosophy has led many philosophers to highlight
respect for autonomy. Thus, we respect others as persons (negatively) by doing nothing to impair or destroy
their capacity for autonomy, by not interfering with their autonomous decisions and their pursuit of (morally
acceptable) the ends they value, and by not coercing or deceiving them or treating them paternalistically. We
also respect them (positively) by protecting them from threats to their autonomy (which may require
intervention when someone's current decisions seem to put their own autonomy at risk) and by promoting
autonomy and the conditions for it (for example, by allowing and encouraging individuals to make their own
decisions, take responsibility for their actions, and control their own lives). Some philosophers have
highlighted Kant's claim that rationality is the ground for recognition respect, arguing that to respect others is
to engage with them not as instruments or obstacles but as persons who are to be reasoned with. So, for
example, we should employ considerations that are accessible to other persons and provide them with
genuine reasons in our dealings with them rather than trying to manipulate them through nonrational
techniques such as threat or bribery, act toward them only in ways to which they could give rational consent,
and be willing to listen to them and take their reasons seriously. The importance of the capacity to set ends
and value things has been taken by some philosophers to entail that respect also involves consideration for
the interests of others; so, we should help them to promote and protect what they value and to pursue their
ends, provided these are compatible with due respect for other persons, and we should make an effort to
appreciate values that are different from our own. Kant's emphasis in the doctrine of justice on the
fundamental rights that persons have has led still others to view the duty of recognition respect for persons as
the duty to respect the moral rights they have as persons; some have claimed that the duty to respect is
nothing more than the duty to refrain from violating these rights (Benn 1988, Feinberg 1970).
One final dimension of Kant's discussions of respect that is worth mentioning is his attention to the feeling of
respect (reverentia). In the Groundwork Kant identifies the object of the feeling of respect as the moral law
and says that respect for the moral law is the only moral motive (Groundwork 4:400). Reverential respect is
unlike any other feeling humans experience in that it is not dependent on empirical desires or any other
contingencies of the individual agent's psychology, situation, or history, but is “self-produced by means of a
rational concept,” that is, the moral law which, as rational beings, we impose on ourselves. The unique moral
feeling of reverential respect both the experience of the objective worth of the moral law (Wood 1999) and
the experience of the supreme and absolute authority that the moral law has over us (Grenberg 1999), the felt
consciousness of the immediate “subordination of my will” to it (Groundwork 4:401n). In Kritik der
practischen Vernuft (Critique of Practical Reason) (1788), Kant discusses reverential respect in explaining
how the moral law, a purely rational principle, is an “incentive” or motivating reason for choice and action in
a being who is not wholly and solely rational but whose will is also affected by inclinations and yet is free
(Critique 5:72–76). As a complex experience that is both the cognitive recognition of the moral law and an
affective state (McCarty 1994), reverential respect is the way, and the only way, in which are aware of the
self-legislated rational principles for action that unconditionally constrain our inclinations (Stratton-Lake
2000). In recognizing the moral law we are conscious of it in a way that involves two contrasting yet
simultaneously experienced feelings. First, in being aware of the law as having absolute authority, we
experience the subordination of our will to its commands. This consciousness of subordination involves a
painful, humbling feeling insofar as our self-love (our efforts to satisfy our desires and pursue our ends) is
constrained and our self-conceit (our attempts to esteem ourselves independently of moral considerations) is
struck down by the moral law's claim to supreme authority. At the same time, however, our awareness of the
moral law involves a pleasurably uplifting feeling insofar as we recognize our own reason to be its only
source. The moral law thus appears to us not merely as constraint but as freely imposed self-constraint; and

reverential respect, this complex experience of the law as both unconditionally authoritative and selfimposed and of both the restriction on our inclinations and the “sublimity” of our “higher vocation” to be
self-legislating and self-governing (Critique 5:87–88), is the way in which we are morally motivated by the
law to do unconditionally and so freely what it commands. Reverential respect is a unique feeling not only in
that it is produced by reason alone but also in that it is the only feeling that we can know a priori, which is to
say that we can know that the moral experience of every human agent is necessarily and inescapably one of
reverential respect for the moral law, for we cannot be aware of the moral law except reverentially (StrattonLake 2000). It is, of course and unfortunately, also true that many of us, perhaps most of us most of the time,
ignore this feeling and so act morally inappropriately. The feeling of respect is unique also, and relatedly, in
that the susceptibility to experience it is “hard-wired” into human nature. In Die Religion innerhalb der
Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason) (1793) Kant calls reverential
respect for the moral law as it itself sufficient to motivate action the “predisposition to personality,” which is
that “original predisposition” in human nature which makes it possible for us to be moral beings (Religion
6:21–23).
As the way in which we are motivated to obey the moral law, reverential respect for the law is thus the way
in which we are motivated to treat persons with recognition respect as the law commands us to do. However,
there is another, deeper connection between respect for the law and respect for persons. For the discussion in
the Critique makes it clear that reverential respect for the moral law is at the same time reverential respect
for oneself, qua rational being, as the author of the law. Self-conceit, trying to esteem ourselves
independently of moral considerations, is also the attempt to make our inclinations “lawgiving and the
unconditional practical principle” (Critique 5:74), i.e., to deny that the moral law is purely rational and
unconditionally and supremely authoritative. Both attempts involve “illusion” (5:75), pretending that we do
not feel reverence for the absolute worth and authority of the moral law and for our reason as its author and
as supreme governor of our inclinations. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant says that feeling of reverential
self-respect, which the law “unavoidably forces from” us (MM 6:403), is part of the subjective basis of
morality, the predispositions to feeling that make possible for beings like us to acknowledge that we have
binding moral duties (MM 6:399–418), including the duty to treat ourselves as well as others always as ends
in ourselves. There is, finally, one further interesting relation between respect for the law and respect for
persons. Although Kant says that the moral law is the sole object of respect (Groundwork 4:400, 401n), he
also says that we experience this same humbling and uplifting feeling of respect for morally good people
(Critique 5:77ff). This feeling is both reverential respect for the moral law which such individuals exemplify
(Groundwork 4:401n) and a mode of evaluative respect, a “tribute” to their moral “merit” (Critique 5:77).
Kant holds that reverence for morally good people, like reverential respect for the moral law, is something
we necessarily and unavoidably feel, although we might pretend we don't or refuse to acknowledge or show
it. Reverential respect for morally good persons contrasts with the duty to give recognition respect to all
persons in our attitudes and conduct, for the former is something we can't help feeling for some people, while
the latter is a way we are obligated to comport ourselves toward all persons regardless of our feelings and
their moral performance. We might, however, regard the two as linked, by regarding our recognition and
appreciation of the dignity of others as involving a feeling that we can't help but experience and to which we
commit ourselves to living up to in acknowledging the moral duty to respect persons just because they are
persons (Hill 1998).

2.3 Further issues, developments, and applications
Philosophical discussions of respect since Kant have tended, on the one hand, to develop or apply various
aspects of it, or on the other, to take issue with it or develop alternative accounts of respect. Some of the
discussions have focused on more theoretical issues. For example, Kant gives the notion of respect for
persons a central and vital role in moral theory. One issue that has since concerned philosophers is whether
respect for persons is the definitive focus of morality, either in the sense that moral rightness and goodness
and hence all specific moral duties, rights, and virtues are explainable in terms of respect or in the sense that
the supreme moral principle from which all other principles are derived is a principle of respect for persons.

Some philosophers have developed ethical theories in which a principle of respect for persons is identified as
the fundamental and comprehensive moral requirement (for example, Donagan 1977, Downie and Telfer
1969). Others (for example, Hill 1993, Frankena 1986, Cranor 1975) argue that while respect for persons is
surely a very important moral consideration, it cannot be the principle from which the rest of morality is
deduced. They maintain that there are moral contexts in which respect for persons is not an issue and that
there are other dimensions of our moral relations with others that seem not to reduce to respect. Moreover,
they argue, such a principle would seem not to provide moral grounds for believing that we ought to treat
mentally incapacitated humans or nonhuman animals decently, or would (as Kant argues) make a duty to
respect such beings only an indirect duty—one we have only because it is a way of respecting persons who
value such beings or because our duty to respect ourselves requires that we not engage in activities that
would dull our ability to treat persons decently—rather than a direct duty to such beings (Kant 1797, 6:443).
Some theorists maintain that utilitarianism, a moral theory generally thought to be a rival to Kant's theory, is
superior with regard to this last point. A utilitarian might argue that it is sentience rather than the capacity for
rational autonomy that is the ground of moral recognition respect, and so would regard mentally
incapacitated humans and nonhuman animals as having moral standing and so as worthy of at least some
moral respect in themselves. Another issue, then, is whether utilitarianism (or more generally,
consequentialism) can indeed accommodate a principle of respect for persons. In opposition to the utilitarian
claim, some Kantians argue that Kant's ethics is distinguishable from consequentialist ethics precisely in
maintaining that the fundamental demand of morality is not that we promote some value, such as the
happiness of sentient beings, but that we respect the worth of humanity regardless of the consequences of
doing so (Korsegaard 1996, Wood 1999). Thus, some philosophers argue that utilitarianism is inconsistent
with respect for persons, inasmuch as utilitarianism, in requiring that all actions, principles, or motives
promote the greatest good, requires treating persons as mere means on those occasions when doing so
maximizes utility, whereas the very point of a principle of respect for persons is to rule out such trading of
persons and their dignity for some other value (Benn 1988, Brody 1982). In opposition, other theorists
maintain not only that a consequentialist theory can accommodate the idea of respect for person (Downie and
Telfer 1969, Gruzalski 1982, Landesman 1982, Pettit 1989, Cummiskey 1990), but also that utilitarianism is
derivable from a principle of respect for persons (Downie and Telfer 1969) and that consequentialist theories
provide a better grounding for duties to respect persons (Pettit 1989).
In addition to the debate between Kantian theory and utilitarianism, theoretical work has also been done in
developing the role of respect for persons in Habermasian communicative ethics (Young 1997, Benhabib
1991) and in Aristotelian ethics (Jacobs 1995), in exploring similarities and differences between western
(Kantian) views of respect for persons and Indian (Ghosh-Dastidar 1987), Confucian (Chan 2006, Wawrytko
1982), and Taoist views (Wong 1984), and in developing a distinctively feminist account of respect for
persons (Farley 1993, Dillon 1992a).
Other philosophical discussions have been concerned with clarifying the nature of the respect that is owed to
persons and of the persons that are owed respect. Some of these discussions aim to refine and develop Kant's
account, while others criticize it and offer alternatives. Darwall (2004, 2006) draws on Kant in revising his
own understanding of the nature of recognition respect for persons, calling attention to an under-discussed
dimension of the dignity of persons on Kant's account. Dignity is not only a worth but a status or standing, a
position in the moral community. The standing is that of an equal, for rational beings have the same dignity.
But it is also a standing or position from which claims or demands can be made. Dignity is, as Kant says in a
passage from the Metaphysics of Morals quoted above, that “by which” rational beings “exact” or demand
respect from one another (MM, 6: 435). As Darwall puts it, dignity is “the second-personal standing of an
equal: the authority to make claims and demands on one another as free and rational agents” and to hold each
other accountable for complying with these commands (Darwall 2004, 43, 44). Persons are just those beings
who have the standing of authority to address demands to one another as persons. Moral recognition respect
for the dignity of persons is acknowledging this authority; we respect one another as persons when we hold
each other mutually accountable for complying with the demands that we acknowledge each person has the

authority to make of each other person as free and rational agents. The reciprocal relations among persons as
authoritative claims-makers and mutually accountable claims-responders is, in Darwall's view, one way of
understanding the constitution of rational beings into the community of equal persons that Kant calls in the
Groundwork a “kingdom of ends.”
Another area of interest has been the connections between respect and other attitudes and emotions,
especially love and between respect and virtues such as trust. For example, Kant (1797) argues that we have
duties of love to others just as we have duties of respect. However, neither the love nor the respect we owe is
a matter of feeling (or, is pathological, as Kant says), but is, rather, a duty to adopt a certain kind of maxim,
or policy of action: the duty of love is the duty to make the ends of others my own, the duty of respect is the
duty to not degrade others to the status of mere means to my ends (Kant 1779, 6: 449–450). Love and
respect, in Kant's view, are intimately united in friendship; nevertheless, they seem to be in tension with one
another and respect seems to be the morally more important of the two, in that the duties of respect are
stricter and respect constrains and limits love within friendship. Critics object to what they see here as Kant's
devaluing of emotions, maintaining that emotions are morally significant dimensions of persons both as
subjects and as objects of both respect and love. In response, some philosophers contend that respect and
love are more similar and closely connected in Kant's theory than is generally recognized (Velleman 1999,
Baron 1997, R. Johnson 1997). Others have developed accounts of respect that is or incorporates a form of
love (agape) or care (Dillon 1992a, Downie and Telfer 1969, Maclagan 1960) and some have argued that
emotions are included among the bases of dignity and that a complex emotional repertoire is necessary for
Kantian respect (Wood 1999, Sherman 1998a, Farley 1993). In a related vein, some philosophers maintain
that it is possible to acknowledge that another being is a person, i.e., a rational moral agent, and yet not have
or give respect to that being. What is required for respecting a person is not simply recognizing what they are
but emotionally experiencing their value as a person (Thomas 2001a, Buss 1999, Dillon 1997).
Another source of dissatisfaction with Kant's account has been with his characterization of persons and the
quality in virtue of which they must be respected. In particular, Kant's view that the rational will which is
common to all persons is the ground of respect is thought to ignore the moral importance of the concrete
particularity of each individual, and his emphasis on autonomy, which is often understood to involve the
independence of one person from all others, is thought to ignore the essential relationality of human
beings(for example, Noggle 1999, Farley 1993, Dillon 1992a, E. Johnson 1982). Rather than ignoring what
distinguishes one person from another, it is argued, respect should involve attending to each person as a
distinctive individual and to the concrete realities of human lives, and it should involve valuing difference as
well as sameness and interdependence as well as independence. Other critics respond that respecting
differences and particular identities inevitably reintroduces hierarchical discrimination that is antithetical to
the equality among persons that the idea of respect for persons is supposed to express (for example, Bird
2004). Identity and difference may, however, be appropriate objects of other forms of consideration and
appreciation.
The idea of respect for particularity and relationality has also become an important topic recently in political
philosophy. One issue is how persons ought to be respected in multicultural liberal democratic societies (for
example, Balint 2006, Tomasi 1995, C. Taylor 1992, Kymlicka 1989). Respect for persons is one of the basic
tenets of liberal democratic societies, which are founded on the ideal of the equal dignity of all citizens and
which realize this ideal in the equalization of rights and entitlements among all citizens and so the rejection
of discrimination and differential treatment. Some writers argue that respecting persons requires respecting
the traditions and cultures that permeate and shape their individual identities (Addis 1997). But as the
citizenry of such societies becomes increasingly more diverse and as many groups come to regard their
identities or very existence as threatened by a homogenizing equality, liberal societies face the question of
whether they should or could respond to demands to respect the unique identity of individuals or groups by
differential treatment, such as extending political rights or opportunities to some cultural groups (for
example, Native Americans, French Canadians, African-Americans) and not others.

The idea that all persons are owed respect has been applied in a wide variety of contexts. For instance, some
philosophers employ it to justify various positions in normative ethics, such as the claim that persons have
moral rights (Benn 1971, Feinberg 1970, Downie and Telfer 1969) or duties (Fried 1978, Rawls 1971), or to
argue for principles of equality (Williams 1962), justice (Narveson 2002a and 2002b, Nussbaum 1999), and
education (Andrews 1976). Others appeal to respect for persons in addressing a wide variety of practical
issues such as abortion, racism and sexism, rape, punishment, physician-assisted suicide, pornography,
affirmative action, forgiveness, terrorism, sexual harassment, cooperation with injustice, treatment of gays
and lesbians, sexual ethics, and many others. In political philosophy, respect persons has been been used to
examine issues of global inequality (e.g., Moellendorf 2010). One very important application context is
biomedical ethics, where the principle of respect for autonomy is one of four basic principles that have
become “the backbone of contemporary Western health care ethics” (Brannigan and Boss 2001, 39; see also
Beauchamp and Childress 1979/2001 and, for example, Munson 2000, Beauchamp and Walters 1999). The
idea of respect for patient autonomy has transformed health care practice, which had traditionally worked on
physician-based paternalism, and the principle enters into issues such as informed consent, truthtelling,
confidentiality, respecting refusals of life-saving treatment, the use of patients as subjects in medical
experimentation, and so on.

3. Respect for Nature and Other Nonpersons
Although persons are the paradigm objects of moral recognition respect, it is a matter of some debate
whether they are the only things that we ought morally to respect. One serious objection raised against Kant's
ethical theory is that in claiming that only rational beings are ends in themselves deserving of respect, it
licenses treating all things which aren't persons as mere means to the ends of rational beings, and so it
supports morally abhorrent attitudes of domination and exploitation toward all nonpersons and toward our
natural environment. Taking issue with the Kantian position that only persons are respectworthy, many
philosophers have argued that such nonpersons as humans who are not agents or not yet agents, human
embryos, nonhuman animals, sentient creatures, plants, species, all living things, biotic communities, the
natural ecosystem of our planet, and even mountains, rocks, and the AIDS virus have moral standing or
worth and so are appropriate objects of or are owed moral recognition respect. Of course, it is possible to
value such things instrumentally insofar as they serve human interests, but the idea is that such things matter
morally and have a claim to respect in their own right, independently of their usefulness to humans.
A variety of different strategies have been employed in arguing for such respect claims. For example, the
concept of moral respect is sometimes stripped down to its bare essentials, omitting much of the content of
the concept as it appears in respect for persons contexts. The respect that is owed to all things, it can be
argued, is a very basic form of attentive contemplation of the object combined with a prima facie assumption
that the object might have intrinsic value. This does not involve the valuing commitments that respect for
persons does, since respectful consideration might reveal that the object does not have any positive value.
What we owe everything is an opportunity to reveal any value it might have, rather than assuming that only
persons have the kind of value that morally warrants attention (Birch 1993).
Another strategy is to argue that the true grounds for moral worth and respect are other than or wider than
rationality. One version of this strategy (employed by P. Taylor 1986) is to argue that all living things,
persons and nonpersons, have equal inherent worth and so equally deserve the same kind of moral respect,
because the ground of the worth of living things that are nonpersons is continuous with the ground of the
worth for persons. For example, we regard persons as respect-worthy inasmuch as they are agents, centers of
autonomous choice and valuation, and we can similarly regard all living things as respect-worthy in virtue of
being quasi-agents, centers of organized activity that pursue their own good in their own unique way. It
follows from this view that humans must not be regarded as having a moral status superior to other living
beings and so human interests may not be regarded as always trumping claims of nonhumans. Respect for all
living things would require settling conflicts between persons and nonpersons in ways that are fair to both.

A third strategy, which is employed within Kantian ethics, is to argue that respect for persons logically
entails respect for nonpersons. For example, one can argue that rational nature is to be respected not only by
respecting humanity in someone's person but also by respecting things that bear certain relations to rational
nature, for example, by being fragments of it or necessary conditions of it. Respect would thus be owed to
humans who are not persons and to animals and other sentient beings (Wood 1998). Alternatively, one can
argue that respect for persons requires respecting their values, and since many people value nature or other
categories of nonpersons intrinsically and not just instrumentally, respect for persons requires (under certain
conditions) also respecting what they respect (Gaus 1998). Yet another strategy is to reject the Kantian notion
that there is but one kind or level of moral status or worth that warrants but one kind or level of respect.
Instead, one might argue, we can acknowledge that rational moral agents have the highest moral standing and
worth and are owed maximal respect, and also maintain that other beings have lesser but still morally
significant standing or worth and so deserve less but still some respect. So, although it is always wrong to
use moral agents merely as means, it may be justifiable to use nonpersons as means (for example, to do
research on human embryos or human cadavers, destroying them in the process, or to kill animals for food)
provided their moral worth is also respectfully acknowledged (for example, by not using them for trivial
purposes, by destroying them only in certain ways, or by having an attitude of regret or loss because
something of genuine moral value is sacrificed) (Meyer and Nelson, 2001). Much philosophical work has
been done, particularly in environmental ethics, to determine the practical implications of the claim that
things other than persons are owed respect (e.g., Schmidtz 2011, Bognar 2011, Connolly 2006, Wiggins
2000, Westra 1989). Certainly a wide variety of human practices, ranging from agriculture and urban
development to recreation and energy use to technological and biomedical research, might have to be
profoundly altered by a recognition of moral duties of respect to nonpersons.

4. Self-Respect
While there is much controversy about respect for persons and other things, there is surprising agreement
among moral and political philosophers about at least this much concerning respect for oneself: self-respect
is something of great importance in everyday life. Indeed, it is regarded both as morally required and as
essential to the ability to live a satisfying, meaningful, flourishing life—a life worth living—and just as vital
to the quality of our lives together. Saying that a person has no self-respect or acts in a way no self-respecting
person would act, or that a social institution undermines the self-respect of some people, is generally a strong
moral criticism. Nevertheless, as with respect itself, there is philosophical disagreement, both real and
merely apparent, about the nature, scope, grounds, and requirements of self-respect. Self-respect is often
defined as a sense of worth or as due respect for oneself; it is frequently (but not always correctly) identified
with or compared to self-esteem, self-confidence, dignity, self-love, a sense of honor, self-reliance, pride, and
it is contrasted (but not always correctly) with servility, shame, humility, self-abnegation, arrogance, selfimportance. In addition to the questions philosophers have addressed about respect in general, a number of
other questions have been of particular concern to those interested in self-respect, such as: (1) What is selfrespect, and how is it different from related notions such as self-esteem, self-confidence, pride, and so on?
(2) Are there objective conditions—for example, moral standards or correct judgments—that a person must
meet in order to have self-respect, or is self-respect a subjective phenomenon that gains support from any
sort of self-valuing without regard to correctness or moral acceptability? (3) Does respecting oneself
conceptually or causally require or lead to respecting other persons (or anything else)? And how are respect
for other persons and respect for oneself alike and unalike? (4) How is self-respect related to such things as
moral rights, virtue, autonomy, integrity, and identity? (5) Is there a moral duty to respect ourselves as there
is a duty to respect others? (6) What features of an individual's psychology and experience, what aspects of
the social context, and what modes of interactions with others support or undermine self-respect? (7) Are
social institutions and practices to be judged just or unjust (at least in part) by how they affect self-respect?
Can considerations of self-respect help us to better understand the nature and wrongness of injustices such as
oppression and to determine effective and morally appropriate ways to resist or end them?

4.1 The concept of self-respect
Most generally, self-respect is a moral relation of persons (and only persons) to themselves that concerns
their own intrinsic worth. Self-respect is thus essentially a valuing form of respect. Like respect for others,
self-respect is a complex of multilayered and interpenetrating phenomena; it involves all those aspects of
cognition, valuation, affect, expectation, motivation, action, and reaction that compose a mode of being in
the world at the heart of which is an appreciation of oneself as having morally significant worth. Unlike
some forms of respect, self-respect is not something one has only now and again or that might have no effect
on its object. Rather, self-respect has to do with the structure and attunement of an individual's identity and
of her life, and it reverberates throughout the self, affecting the configuration and constitution of the person's
thoughts, desires, values, emotions, commitments, dispositions, and actions. As expressing or constituting
one's sense of worth, it includes an engaged understanding of one's worth, as well as a desire and disposition
to protect and preserve it. Accounts of self-respect differ in their characterizations of the beliefs, desires,
affects, and behaviors that are constitutive of it, chiefly because of differences concerning the aspects or
conception of the self insofar as it is the object of one's respect and the nature and grounds of the worth of
the self or aspects of the self.
Most theorists agree that as there are different kinds of respect, so there are different kinds of self-respect.
However, we clearly cannot apply all kinds of respect to ourselves: it makes no sense to talk of directive
respect for oneself, for instance, and although one might regard oneself or some of one's characteristics as
obstacles (“I'm my own worst enemy”), this would not generally be considered a form of self-respect.
Because the notion of self-worth is the organizing motif for self-respect, and because in the dominant
Western tradition two kinds of worth are ascribed to persons, two kinds of self-respect can be distinguished.
The first, recognition self-respect, centers on what we can call status worth, which is worth that derives from
such things as one's essential nature as a person, membership in a certain class, group, or people, social role,
or place in a social hierarchy. Kantian dignity is one form, but not the only form, of status worth. Evaluative
self-respect, in contrast, has to do with acquired worth, merit, based on the quality of one's character and
conduct. We earn or lose moral merit, and so deserve or don't deserve evaluative self-respect, through what
we do or become. Different sources of status worth yield different configurations of recognition self-respect,
but most contemporary discussions, heavily influenced by Kant, focus on dignity-based recognition selfrespect. Recognition respect for oneself as a person, then, involves living in light of an understanding and
appreciation of oneself as having dignity and moral status just in virtue of being a person, and of the moral
constraints that arise from that dignity and status. All persons are morally obligated or entitled to have this
kind of self-respect. Because the dominant Kantian conception of persons grounds dignity in three things—
equality, agency, and individuality—we can further distinguish three kinds of recognition self-respect. The
first is respect for oneself as a person among persons, as a member of the moral community with a status and
dignity equal to every other person (see, for example, Thomas 1983a, Boxill 1976, Hill 1973). This involves
having some conception of the kinds of treatment from others that would count as one's due as a person and
treatment that would be degrading or beneath one's dignity, desiring to be regarded and treated appropriately,
and resenting and being disposed to protest disregard and disrespectful treatment. Thinking of oneself as
having certain moral rights that others ought not to violate is part of this kind of self-respect; servility
(regarding oneself as the inferior of others) and arrogance (thinking oneself superior to others) are among its
opposites.
The second kind of recognition self-respect involves an appreciation of oneself as an agent, a being with the
ability and responsibility to act autonomously and value appropriately (see, for example, G. Taylor 1985,
Telfer 1968). Persons who respect themselves as agents take their responsibilities seriously, especially their
responsibilities to live in accord with their dignity as persons, to govern themselves fittingly, and to make of
themselves and their lives something they believe to be good. So, self-respecting persons regard certain
forms of acting, thinking, desiring, and feeling as befitting them as persons and other forms as self-debasing

or shameful, and they expect themselves to adhere to the former and avoid the latter. They take care of
themselves and seek to develop and use their talents and abilities in pursuit of their plans, projects, and goals.
Those who are shameless, uncontrolled, weak-willed, self-consciously sycophantic, chronically
irresponsible, slothfully dependent, self-destructive, or unconcerned with the shape and direction of their
lives may be said to not respect themselves as agents.
A third kind of recognition self-respect involves the appreciation of the importance of being autonomously
self-defining. One way a self-respecting individual does this is through having, and living in light, of a
normative self-conception, i.e., a conception of being and living that she regards as worthy of her as the
particular person she is. Such a self-conception both gives expression to ideals and commitments that shape
the individual’s identity, and also organizes desires, choices, pursuits, and projects in ways that give
substance and worth to the self. Self-respecting people hold themselves to personal expectations and
standards the disappointment of which they would regard as unworthy of them, shameful, even contemptible
(although they may not apply these standards to others) (Hill 1982). People who sell out, betray their own
values, live inauthentic lives, let themselves be defined by others, or are complacently self-accepting lack
this kind of recognition self-respect.
To these three Kantian kinds of recognition self-respect we can add a fourth, which has to do with the fact
that it is not just as abstract human beings or as agents with personal and universalizable moral goals and
obligations that individuals can, do, or should respect themselves but also as concrete persons embedded in
particular social structures and occupying various social positions with status-related responsibilities they
must meet to be self-respecting (Middleton 2006). This last kind also has political implications, as discussed
below.
Evaluative self-respect, which expresses confidence in one's merit as a person, rests on an appraisal of
oneself in light of the normative self-conception that structures recognition self-respect. Recognition selfrespecting persons are concerned to be the kind of person they think it is good and appropriate for them to be
and they try to live the kind of life such a person should live. Thus they have and try to live by certain
standards of worthiness by which they are committed to judge themselves. Indeed, they stake themselves,
their value and their identities, on living in accord with these standards. Because they want to know where
they stand, morally, they are disposed to reflectively examine and evaluate their character and conduct in
light of their normative vision of themselves. And it matters to them that they are able to “bear their own
survey,” as Hume says (1739 (1971), 620). Evaluative self-respect contains the judgment that one is or is
becoming the worthy kind of person one seeks to be, and, more significantly, that one is not in danger of
becoming an unworthy kind of person (Dillon 2004). Evaluative self-respect holds, at the least, the judgment
that one “comes up to scratch,” as Telfer (1968) puts it. Those whose conduct is unworthy or whose character
is shameful by their own standards do not deserve their own evaluative respect. However, people can be poor
self-appraisers and their standards can be quite inappropriate to them or to any person, and so their
evaluative self-respect, though still subjectively satisfying, can be unwarranted, as can the loss or lack of it.
Interestingly, although philosophers have paid scant attention to evaluative respect for others, significant
work has been done on evaluative self-respect. This may reflect an asymmetry between the two: although our
evaluative respect for others may have no effect on them, perhaps because we don't express it or they don't
value our appraisal, our own self-evaluation matters intensely to us and can powerfully affect our selfidentity and the shape and structure of our lives. Indeed, an individual's inability to stomach herself can
profoundly diminish the quality of her life, even her desire to continue living.
Some philosophers have contended that a third kind of self-valuing underlies both recognition and evaluative
self-respect. It is a more basic sense of worth that enables an individual to develop the intellectually more
sophisticated forms, a precondition for being able to take one's qualities or the fact that one is a person as
grounds of positive self-worth. It has been called “basic psychological security” (Thomas 1989), “self-love”
(Buss 1999), and “basal self-respect” (Dillon 1997). Basal self-valuing is our most fundamental sense of
ourselves as mattering and our primordial interpretation of self and self-worth. Strong and secure basal self-

respect can immunize an individual against personal failing or social denigration, but damage to basal selfrespect, which can occur when people grow up in social, political, or cultural environments that devalue
them or “their kind,” can make it impossible for people to properly interpret themselves and their self-worth,
because it affects the way in which they assess reality and weigh reasons. Basal self-respect is thus the
ground of the possibility of recognition and evaluative self-respect.
It is common in everyday discourse and philosophical discussion to treat self-respect and self-esteem as
synonyms. It is true that evaluative self-respect and self-esteem both involve appraising oneself favorably in
virtue of one's behavior and personal traits, and that a person can have or lack either one undeservedly.
However, many philosophers have argued that the two attitudes are importantly different (for example,
Darwall 1977, Sachs 1981, Chazan 1998, Harris, 2001, Dillon 2004, 2013). One way of distinguishing them
is by their grounds and the points of view from which they are appraised. Evaluative self-respect involves an
assessment from a moral point of view of one's character and conduct, while self-esteem can be based on
personal features that are unrelated to character, and the assessment it involves need not be from a moral
point of view: one can have a good opinion of oneself in virtue of being a good joke-teller or having won an
important sports competition and yet not think one is a good person because of it (Darwall 1977). Another
way of distinguishing them focuses on what it is to lose them: one would lose evaluative respect for oneself
if one judged oneself to be shameful, contemptible, or intolerable, but self-esteem can be diminished by the
belief that one lacks highly prized qualities that would add to one's merit (Harris 2001). Self-respect is also
often identified with pride. In one sense, pride is the pleasure or satisfaction taken in one's achievements,
possessions, or associations, and in this sense pride can be an affective element of either evaluative selfrespect or self-esteem. In another sense, pride is inordinate self-esteem or vanity, an excessively high opinion
of one's qualities, accomplishments, or status that can make one arrogant and contemptuous of others. In this
sense, pride contrasts with both well-grounded evaluative self-respect and the interpersonal kind of
recognition self-respect. But pride can also be a claim to and celebration of a status worth or to equality with
others, especially other groups (for example, Black Pride), which is interpersonal recognition self-respect;
and pride can be “proper pride,” a sense of one's dignity that prevents one from doing what is unworthy, and
in this sense it is the agentic dimension of recognition self-respect. Pride's opposites, shame and humility, are
also closely related to self-respect. A loss of evaluative self-respect may be expressed in shame, but
shameless people manifest a lack of recognition self-respect; and although humiliation can diminish or
undermine recognition self-respect, humility is an appropriate dimension of the evaluative respect of any
imperfect person.
One issue with which contemporary philosophers have been concerned is whether self-respect is an objective
concept or a subjective one. If it is the former, then there are certain beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions a
person must have to be self-respecting. A person who thought of herself as a lesser sort of being whose
interests and well-being are less important than those of others would not count as having recognition selfrespect, no matter how appropriate she regards her stance. If self-respect is a subjective concept, then a
person counts as having self-respect so long as she believes she is not tolerating treatment she regards as
unworthy or behaving in ways she thinks is beneath her, regardless of whether her judgments about herself
are accurate or her standards or sense of what she is due are judged by others to be reasonable or worthy
(Massey 1983a). Psychologists, for whom “self-esteem” is the term of practice, tend to regard the various
dimensions of a person's sense of worth as subjective. Many philosophers treat the interpersonal dimension
of recognition self-respect objectively, and it is generally thought that having manifestly inaccurate beliefs
about oneself is good grounds for at least calling an individual's sense of worth unjustified or compromised
(Meyers 1989). But there is no consensus regarding the standards to which individuals hold themselves and
by which they judge themselves, and certainly the standards of the self-defining dimension of recognition
self-respect are inescapably, though perhaps not exclusively, subjective. Complicating the
objective/subjective distinction, however, is the fact of the social construction of self-respect. What it is to be
a person or to have a status worthy of respect, what treatment and conduct are appropriate to a person or one
with such a status, what forms of life and character have merit—all of these are given different content in
different sociocultural contexts. Individuals necessarily, though perhaps not inalterably, learn to engage with

themselves and with issues of self-worth in the terms and modes of the sociocultural conceptions in which
they have been immersed. And different kinds of individuals may be given different opportunities in different
sociocultural contexts to acquire or develop the grounds of the different kinds of self-respect (Dillon 1997,
Moody-Adams 1992–93, Meyers 1989, Thomas 1983b). Even fully justified self-respect may thus be less
than strongly objective and more than simply subjective.

4.2 Treatment of self-respect in moral and political philosophy
Self-respect is frequently appealed to as a means of justifying a wide variety of philosophical claims or
positions, generally in arguments of the form: x promotes (or undermines) self-respect; therefore, x is to that
extent to be morally approved (or objected to). For example, appeals to self-respect have been used to argue
for, among many other things, the value of moral rights (Feinberg 1970), moral requirements or limits
regarding forgiving others or oneself (Dillon 2001; Holmgren 1998, 1993; Novitz 1998; Haber 1991;
Murphy 1982), and both the rightness and wrongness of practices such as affirmative action. Such arguments
rely on rather than establish the moral importance of self-respect. Most philosophers who attend to selfrespect tend to treat it as important in one of two ways, which are exemplified in the very influential work of
Kant and John Rawls. Kant argues that, just as we have a moral duty to respect others as persons, so we have
a moral duty to respect ourselves as persons, a duty that derives from our dignity as rational beings. This
duty requires us to act always in an awareness of our dignity and so to act only in ways that are consistent
with our status as end in ourselves and to refrain from acting in ways that abase, degrade, defile, or disavow
our rational nature. That is, we have a duty of recognition self-respect. In The Metaphysics of Morals (1797),
Kant argues for specific duties to oneself generated by the general duty to respect humanity in our persons,
including duties to not engage in suicide, misuse of our sexual powers, drunkenness and other unrestrained
indulgence of inclination, lying, self-deception, avarice, and servility. Kant also maintains that the duty of
self-respect is the most important moral duty, for unless there were duties to respect oneself, there could be
no moral duties at all. Moreover, fulfilling our duty to respect ourselves is a necessary condition of fulfilling
our duties to respect other persons. Kant maintains that we are always aware of our dignity as persons and so
of our moral obligation to respect ourselves, and he identifies this awareness as a feeling of reverential
respect for ourselves. This is one of the natural capacities of feeling which we could have no duty to acquire
but that make it possible for us to be motivated by the thought of duty. Reverence for self is, along with
“moral feeling,” conscience, and love of others, a subjective source of morality, and it is the motivational
ground of the duty of self-respect. Kant also discusses evaluative self-respect, especially in Critique of
Practical Reason (1788) and his Lectures on Ethics (1779), as a combination of noble pride, the awareness
that we have honored and preserved our dignity by acting in morally worthy ways, and a healthy dose of
humility, the awareness that we inevitably fall short of the lofty requirements of the moral law. Kant regards
well-grounded evaluative self-respect as a subjective motivation to continue striving to do right and be good.
Rawls, by contrast, views self-respect neither as something we are morally required to have and maintain nor
as a feeling we necessarily have, but as an entitlement that social institutions are required by justice to
support and not undermine. In A Theory of Justice (1971) he argues that self-respect is a “primary good,”
something that rational beings want whatever else they want, because it is vital to the experienced quality of
individual lives and to the ability to carry out or achieve whatever projects or aims an individual might have.
It is, moreover, a social good, one that individuals are able to acquire only under certain social and political
conditions. Rawls defines self-respect as including “a person's sense of his own value, his secure conviction
that his conception of the good, his plan of life, is worth carrying out,” and it implies “a confidence in one's
ability, so far as it is within one's power, to fulfill one's intentions” (Rawls 1971, 440). He argues that
individuals' access to self-respect is to a large degree a function of how the basic institutional structure of a
society defines and distributes the social bases of self-respect, which include the messages about the relative
worth of citizens that are conveyed in the structure and functioning of institutions, the distribution of
fundamental political rights and civil liberties, access to the resources individuals need to pursue their plans
of life, the availability of diverse associations and communities within which individuals can seek
affirmation of their worth and their plans of life from others, and the norms governing public interaction

among citizens. Since self-respect is vital to individual well-being, Rawls argues that justice requires that
social institutions and policies be designed to support and not undermine self-respect. Rawls argues that the
principles of justice as fairness are superior to utilitarian principles insofar as they better affirm and promote
self-respect for all citizens.
Rawls's view that the ability of individuals to respect themselves is heavily dependent on their social and
political circumstances has been echoed by a number of theorists working in moral, social, and political
philosophy. For example, Margalit (1996) argues that a decent society is one whose institutions do not
humiliate people, that is, give people good reason to consider their self-respect to be injured. Honneth's
theory of social criticism (1995) focuses on the way people's self-respect and self-identity necessarily depend
on the recognition of others and so are vulnerable to being misrecognized or ignored both by social
institutions and in interpersonal interactions. A number of theorists have used the concept of self-respect to
examine the oppression of women, people of color, gays and lesbians, and other groups that are
marginalized, stigmatized, or exploited by the dominant culture, identifying the plethora of ways in which
oppressive institutions, images, and actions can do damage to the self-respect of members of these groups.
Other writers discuss ways that individuals and groups might preserve or restore self-respect in the face of
injustice or oppression, and the ways in which the development of self-respect in individuals living under
oppression or injustice empowers them to participate in the monumental struggles for justice and liberation
(for example, Babbitt 2000, 1993; Bartky 1990a, 1990b, 1990c; Boxill 1992, 1976; Collins 1990; Dillon
1997, 1995; Hay 2013, 2011; Meyers 1989, 1986; Mohr 1992, 1988; Moody-Adams 1992–93; Statman
2002; Thomas 2001b, 1983a, 1978–79). Some theorists, especially those working within a feminist
framework, have argued that the prevailing conceptions of self-respect in Kantian theory or in contemporary
liberal societies themselves contain features that reflect objectionable aspects of the dominating culture, and
they have attempted to reconceive self-respect in ways that are more conducive to empowerment and
emancipation (for example, Dillon 1992c, Borgwald 2012).
In moral philosophy, theorists have also focused on connections between self-respect and various virtues and
vices, such as self-trust (Borgwald 2012, Govier 1993), justice (Bloomfield 2011), honesty (Mauri 2011),
benevolence (Andrew 2011), humility (Grenberg 2010), self-forgiveness (Holmgren 1998, Dillon 2001),
self-improvement (Johnson 2011), general immorality (Bagnoli 2009, Bloomfield 2008), and arrogance
(Dillon 2003, 2007).

5. Conclusion
Everyday discourse and practices insist that respect and self-respect are personally, socially, politically, and
morally important, and philosophical discussions of the concepts bear this out. Their roles in our lives as
individuals, as people living in complex relations with other people and surrounded by a plethora of other
beings and things on which our attitudes and actions have tremendous effects, cannot, as these discussions
reveal, be taken lightly. The discussions thus far shed light on the nature and significance of the various
forms of respect and self-respect and their positions in a nexus of profoundly important but philosophically
challenging and contestable concepts. These discussions also reveal that more work remains to be done in
clarifying these attitudes and their places among and implications for our concepts and our lives.

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–––, 2002, “Equal Respect and Equal Shares,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 19: 244–274.



–––, 1998, “Are All Species Equal?” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 15: 57–67.



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Shields, P.R., 1998, “Some Reflections on Respecting Childhood,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 32: 369–
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Woodruff, P., 2003, “Reverence, Respect, and Dependence,” in Virtues of Independence and
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Young, I.M., 1997, “Asymmetrical Reciprocity: On Moral Respect, Wonder, and Enlarged Thought,”
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Zinkin, M., 2006, “Respect for the Law and the Use of Dynamic Terms in Kant's Theory of Moral
Motivation,” Archiv fur Geschichte der Philosophie, 88: 31–53.

Philosophical works chiefly on self-respect and related concepts



Adler, M.J., et al., 1952, “Honor,” in The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western
World, Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.
Allen, R.F., 2008, “Free Agency and Self-Esteem,” Sorities, 20: 74–79.



Andrew, B., 2011, “Self-Respect and Loving Others,” in Sex, Love, and Friendship, A. L. McEvoy
(ed.), New York: Rodopi.



Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, W.D. Ross (trans.), in Basic Works of Aristotle, R. McKeon (ed.),
New York: Random House, 1941.



Babbitt, S., 2000, Artless Integrity: Moral Imagination, Agency, and Stories, Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield.



–––, 1993, “Feminism and Objective Interests: The Role of Transformation Experiences in Rational
Deliberation,” in Feminist Epistemologies, L. Alcoff and E. Potter (eds.), New York: Routledge.



Balaief, L., 1975, “Self-Esteem and Human Equality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
36: 25–43.



Bagnoli, C., 2009, “The Mafioso Case: Autonomy and Self-Respect,” Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice, 12: 477–493.



Bartky, S.L., 1990a, “Feminine Masochism and the Politics of Personal Transformation,” in Bartky,
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression, New York: Routledge.



–––, 1990b, “On Psychological Oppression,” Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the
Phenomenology of Oppression, New York: Routledge



–––, 1990c, “Shame and Gender,” in Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the
Phenomenology of Oppression, New York: Routledge.



Becker, L.C., 1992, “Pride,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, L. C. Becker and C. B. Becker (eds.), New
York: Garland Publishing, Inc.



Bernick, M., 1978, “A Note on Promoting Self-Esteem,” Political Theory, 6: 109–118.



Bird, C., 2010, “Self-Respect and the Respect of Others,” European Journal of Philosophy, 18: 17–
40.



Bloomfield, P., 2011, “Justice as a Self-Regarding Virtue,” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, 82: 46–64.




––, 2008, “The Harm of Immorality” Ratio, 21: 241–259.
Borgwald, K., 2012, “Women's Anger, Epistemic Personhood, and Self-Respect,” Philosophical
Studies, 161: 69–76.




Boxill, B.R., 1992, Blacks and Social Justice, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
–––, 1976, “Self-Respect and Protest,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 6: 58–69; reprinted in Dignity,
Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.




Braybrooke, D., 1983, Ethics in the World of Business, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allenheld.
Campbell, R., 1979, Self-Love and Self-Respect: A Philosophical Study of Egoism, Ottowa: Canadian
Library of Philosophy.



Care, N., 2000, Decent People, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.



Champlin, T.S., 1995, “Hanfling on Self-Love,” Philosophy, 70: 107–110.



Chazan, P., 1998, “Self-Esteem, Self-Respect, and Love of Self: Ways of Valuing the Self,”
Philosophia, 26: 41–63.



Christensen, D., 2007, “Epistemic Self-Respect,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 107: 319–
337.



Collins, P.H., 1990, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of
Empowerment, New York: Routledge.



Daniels, N., 1975, “Equal Liberty and Unequal Worth of Liberty,” in Reading Rawls: Critical Studies
of “A Theory of Justice,” N. Daniels (ed.), New York: Basic Books, Inc.



Darwall, S.L., 1988, “Self-Deception, Autonomy, and Moral Constitution,” in Perspectives on SelfDeception, B.P. McLaughlin and A.O. Rorty (eds.), Berkeley: University of California Press.



DeGrazia, D., 1991, “Grounding a Right to Health Care in Self-Respect and Self-Esteem,” Public
Affairs Quarterly, 5: 301–318.



Deigh, J., 1983, “Shame and Self-Esteem: A Critique,” Ethics, 93: 225–245; reprinted in Dignity,
Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



Diller, A., 2001, “Pride and Self-Respect in Unjust Social Orders,” Philosophy of Education 2001:
308–310.



Dillon, R. S., 2013, “Self-Respect and Self-Esteem,” International Encyclopedia of Ethics, H.
LaFollette (ed.), New York: Wiley–Blackwell.



–––, 2007, “Arrogance, Self-Respect, and Personhood,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14: 101–
126.



–––, 2004, “‘What's a Woman Worth? What's Life Worth? Without Self-Respect?’: On the Value of
Evaluative Self-Respect,” in Moral Psychology: Feminist Ethics and Social Theory, P. DesAutels and M.
Walker (eds.), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.



–––, 2003, “Kant on Arrogance and Self-Respect,” in Setting the Moral Compass: Essays by Women
Philosophers, C.Calhoun (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press.



–––, 2001, “Self-Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” Ethics, 112: 53–83.



–––, 1997, “Self-Respect: Moral, Emotional, Political,” Ethics, 107: 226–249.



–––, ed., 1995, Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, New York: Routledge.



–––, 1992b, “How To Lose Your Self-Respect,” American Philosophical Quarterly, 29: 125–139.



–––, 1992c, “Toward a Feminist Conception of Self-Respect,” Hypatia, 7: 52–69; reprinted in
Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



Doppelt, G., 2009, “The Place of Self-Respect in a Theory of Justice,” Inquiry, 52: 127–154.



–––, 1981, “Rawls's System of Justice: A Critique from the Left,” Noûs, 15: 259–307.



Elster, J., 1985–86, “Self-Realization in Work and Politics: The Marxist Conception of the Good
Life,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 3: 97–126.



Eyal, N., 2005, “Perhaps the Most Important Primary Good: Self-Respect and Rawls' Principles of
Justice,” Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 4: 195–215.



Ezorsky, G., 1991, Racism & Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.



Falk, W.D., 1986, “Morality, Form, and Content,” in Ought, Reasons, and Morality: The Collected
Papers of W. D. Falk, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.



Feinberg, J., 1970, “The Nature and Value of Rights,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 4: 243–257.



Ferguson, A., 1987, “A Feminist Aspect Theory of the Self,” in Science, Morality, and Feminist
Theory, M. Hanen and K. Nielsen (eds.), Calgary: University of Calgary Press.



Ferkany, M., 2008, “The Educational Importance of Self-Esteem,” Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 42: 119–132.



Flanagan, O., 1991, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.




Friedman, M., 1985, “Moral Integrity and the Deferential Wife,” Philosophical Studies, 47: 141–150.
Gewirth, A., 1992, “Human Dignity as the Basis of Rights,” in The Constitution of Rights: Human
Dignity and American Values, M.J. Meyer and W.A. Parent (eds.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press.



–––, 1978, Reason and Morality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.



Govier, T., 1993, “Self-Trust, Autonomy, and Self-Esteem” Hypatia, 8: 99–120.



Grace, H.A., 1953, “The Self and Self-Acceptance,” Educational Theory, 3: 220-235.



Grenberg, J., 2010, Kant and the Ethics of Humility, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Gutman, A., 1980, Liberal Equality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Haber, J.G., 1991, Forgiveness, Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.



Hadji Haldar, H., 2009, “The Qu'ranic Principle of Peace,” Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies, 2: 159–
180.



Hampton, J., 1997, “The Wisdom of the Egoist: The Moral and Political Implications of Valuing the
Self,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 14: 21–51.



–––, 1993, “Selflessness and the Loss of Self,” Social Philosophy and Policy, 10: 135–165.



Hansberg, O.E., 2000, “The Role of Emotions in Moral Psychology: Shame and Indignation,”
Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, vol 9: Philosophy of Mind, B. Elevitch (ed.),
Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center.



Harris, G.W., 2001, “Self-Esteem,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2nd edition, L.C. Becker and C.B.
Becker (eds.), New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.



Hay, C., 2013, Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Resisting Oppression, New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.



–––, 2011, “The Obligation to Resist Oppression,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 42: 21–45.




Heins, V., 2008, “Realizing Honneth: Redistribution, Recognition, and Global Justice,” Journal of
Global Ethics, 4: 141–153.
Held, V., 1973, “Reasonable Progress and Self-Respect,” The Monist, 57: 12–27.



Hill, T.E., Jr., 1992, “Self-Respect,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, L.C. Becker and C.B. Becker (eds.),
New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.



–––, 1991, Autonomy and Self-Respect, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



–––, 1986, “Darwall on Practical Reason.” Ethics 96: 604–619.



–––, 1982, “Self-Respect Reconsidered,” in Respect for Persons, O. H. Green (ed.), Tulane Studies in
Philosophy, Vol. 31, New Orleans: Tulane University Press; reprinted in Dignity, Character, and SelfRespect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



–––, 1973, “Servility and Self-Respect,” Monist, 57: 12–27; reprinted in Dignity, Character, and SelfRespect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



Holroyd, J., 2010, ”Substantively Constrained Choice and Deference,“ Journal of Moral Philosophy,
7: 180–199.



Holmgren, M., 1998, “Self-Forgiveness and Responsible Moral Agency,” Journal of Value Inquiry,
32: 75–91.



Honneth, A., 1995, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts,
Cambridge: Polity Press.



Horsburgh, H.J.N., 1954, “The Plurality of Moral Standards,” Philosophy, 24: 332–346.



Hudson, S.D., 1986, Human Character and Morality: Reflections from the History of Ideas, Boston:
Routledge and Kegan Paul.



Hume, D., 1751 (1983), Enquiries Concerning the Principle of Morals, J.B. Schneewind (ed.),
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.



–––, 1739 (1971), A Treatise of Human Nature, L.A. Selby-Bigge (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University
Press.



Ikuenobe, P., 2004, “Culture of Racism, Self-Respect, and Blameworthiness,” Public Affairs
Quarterly, 18: 27–55.



Isenberg, A., 1949, “Natural Pride and Natural Shame,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
10: 1–24.



Johnson, R., 2011, Self-Improvement: An Essay in Kantian Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Kekes, J., 1988, “Shame and Moral Progress,” in Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, vol. 13, P.A. French, T.E. Uehling, and H.K. Wettstein (eds.), Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press.



Kelleher, W., 2009, “Respect and Empathy in the Social Science Writings of Michael Polanyi,”
Tradition and Discovery, 35: 8–32.



Kristjansson, K., 2007, “Measuring Self-Respect,” Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 37:
225–242.



–––, 2002, Justifying Emotions: Pride and Jealousy, New York: Routledge.



–––, 1998, “Self-Respect, Megalopsychia, and Moral Education,” Journal of Moral Education, 27:
5–17.



Kupfer, J., 1997, “What's Wrong with Prostitution?” in Explorations in Value, T. Magnal (ed.),
Amsterdam: Rodopi.




–––, 1995, “Prostitutes, Musicians, and Self-Respect,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 26: 75–88.
LaCaze, M., 2008, “Seeing Oneself Through the Eyes of the Other: Asymmetrical Reciprocity and
Self-Respect,” Hypatia, 23: 118–135.



Lane, R.E., 1982, “Government and Self-Esteem,” Political Theory, 10: 5–31.



Lomasky, L., 1987, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community, Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Maclaren, E., 1974, “Dignity,” Journal of Medical Ethics, 3: 40-41.



Margalit, A., 1996, The Decent Society, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.



Martin, M.W., 1996, Love's Virtues, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.



–––, 1989, Everyday Morality: An Introduction to Applied Ethics, Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth.



–––, 1986, Self-Deception and Morality, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.



Massey, S. J., 1983a, “Is Self-Respect a Moral or a Psychological Concept?” Ethics, 93: 246–261;
reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



–––, 1983b, “Kant on Self-Respect,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 21: 57–73.



Mauri, M., 2011, “Self-Respect and Honesty,” Filozofia, 66: 74–82.



McGary, H., 1988, “Reparations, Self-Respect, and Public Policy,” in Ethical Theory and Society, D.
Goldberg (ed.), New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.



McKinnon, C., 2000, “Exclusion Rules and Self-Respect,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 34: 491–505.



–––, 1997, “Self-Respect and the Stepford Wives,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 97: 325–
330.




Meyer, M.J., 1992, “Dignity,” in Encyclopedia of Ethics, L.C. Becker and C.B. Becker (eds.), New
York: Garland Publishing, Inc.
–––, 1989, “Dignity, Rights, and Self-Control,” Ethics, 99: 520-534.



–––, 1987, “Kant's Conception of Dignity and Modern Political Thought,” History of European
Ideas, 8: 319–332.



Meyer, M.J., and W.A. Parent, eds., 1992, The Constitution of Rights: Human Dignity and American
Values, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.



Meyers, D.T., 1989, Self, Society, and Personal Choice, New York: Columbia University Press;
excerpts reprinted in Dignity, Character, Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



–––, 1987a, “The Socialized Individual and Individual Autonomy,” in Women and Moral Theory, E.F.
Kittay and D.T. Meyers (eds.), Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.



–––, 1987b, “Work and Self-Respect,” in Moral Rights in the Workplace, G. Ezorsky (ed.), Albany:
State University of New York Press.




–––, 1986, “The Politics of Self-Respect,” Hypatia, 1: 83–100.
Michelman, F., 1975, “Constitutional Welfare Rights and A Theory of Justice,” in Reading Rawls:
Critical Studies of, A Theory of Justice, N. Daniels (ed.), New York: Basic Books, Inc.



Middleton, D., 2006, “Three Types of Self-Respect,” Res Publica, 12: 59–76.



Mohr, R.D., 1992, Gay Ideas: Outings and Other Controversies, Boston: Beacon Press.



–––, 1988, Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society, and Law, New York: Columbia University Press.



Molyneux, D., 2009, “Should Healthcare Professionals Respect Autonomy Just Because it Promotes
Welfare?”, Journal of Medical Ethics, 35: 245–250.



Montefiore, A., 1980, “Self-Reality, Self-Respect, and Respect for Others,” in Studies in Ethical
Theory, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, P.A. French, T.E. Uehling, and H.K. Wettstein (eds.),
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.



Moody-Adams, M.M., 1992–93, “Race, Class, and the Social Construction of Self-Respect,” The
Philosophical Forum, 24: 251–266; reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New
York: Routledge, 1995.



Morgan, K.P., 1986, “Romantic Love, Altruism, and Self-Respect: An Analysis of Simone de
Beauvoir,” Hypatia, 1: 117–148.



Morris, B., 1946, “The Dignity of Man,” Ethics, 57: 57–64.



Murphy, J.G., 1982, “Forgiveness and Resentment,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 7: 503–516.



–––, 1972, “Moral Death: A Kantian Essay on Psychopathy,” Ethics, 82: 284–298.



Murphy, J.G. and Hampton, J., 1988, Forgiveness and Mercy, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.



Nielsen, K., 1980, “Capitalism, Socialism, and Justice: Reflections on Rawls's Theory of Justice,”
Social Praxis, 7: 253–277.



Novitz, D., 1998, “Forgiveness and Self-Respect,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 58:
299–315.



Nozick, R., 1981, Philosophical Explanations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.



–––, 1974, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, New York: Basis Books.



Owen, D., 2002, “Equality, Democracy, and Self-Respect: Reflections of Nietzsche's Agonal
Perfectionism,” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 24: 113–131.



Parent, W.A., 1992, “Constitutional Values and Human Dignity,” in The Constitution of Rights:
Human Dignity and American Values, M.J. Meyer and W.A. Parent (eds.), Ithaca: Cornell University Press.



Peters, R.S., 1974, Psychology and Ethical Development, London: George Allen and Unwin.



Phillips, M., 1987, “Reason, Dignity, and the Formal Conception of Practical Reason,” American
Philosophical Quarterly, 24: 191–198.



Postow, B.C., 1978–79, “Economic Dependence and Self-Respect,” The Philosophical Forum, 10:
181–205.




Pritchard, M.S., 1991, On Becoming Responsible, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
–––, 1982, “Self-Regard and the Supererogatory,” in Respect for Persons, O.H. Green (ed.), Tulane
Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 31, New Orleans: Tulane University Press.



–––, 1977, “Rawls's Moral Psychology,” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 8: 59–72.



–––, 1972, “Human Dignity and Justice,” Ethics, 82: 299–313.



Proudfoot, W., 1978, “Rawls on Self-Respect and Social Union,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 5:
255–269.



Pullman, D., 1990, “Self-Respect, Morality, and Justice,” in Terrorism, Justice, and Social Values, C.
Peden (ed.), Lewiston: Mellen Press.



Rawls, J., 2000, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Barbara Herman (ed.), Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press.



–––, 1982, “The Basic Liberties and Their Priority,” in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 3,
Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.




–––, 1980, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory”, The Journal of Philosophy, 77: 515–572.
–––, 1971, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; excerpt reprinted in
Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



Raz, J., 1989, “Liberating Duties,” Law and Philosophy.



Sachs, D., 1982, “Self-Respect and Respect for Others: Are They Independent?” in Respect for
Persons, O.H. Green (ed.), Tulane Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 31, New Orleans: Tulane University Press.



–––, 1981, “How To Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10:
346–360.



Scarre, G., 2001, “Upton on Evil Pleasures,” Utilitas, 13: 106–111.



–––, 1992, “Utilitarianism and Self-Respect,” Utilitas, 4: 27–42.



Seidler, V. J., 1991, The Moral Limits of Modernity: Love, Inequality, and Oppression. New York: St.
Martins Press.



–––, 1986, Kant, Respect, and Injustice: The Limits of Liberal Moral Theory, London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.



Shue, H., 1975, “Liberty and Self-Respect,” Ethics, 85: 195–203.



Solomon, R., 1977, The Passions, New York: Basic Books.



Speigelberg, H., 1971, “Human Dignity: A Challenge to Contemporary Philosophy,” Philosophy
Forum, 9: 39–64.



Stark, C. A., 1998, “Self-Respect,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Craig (ed.), London:
Routledge.



–––, 1997, “The Rationality of Valuing Oneself: A Critique of Kant on Self-Respect,” Journal of the
History of Philosophy, 35: 65–82.



Statman, D., 2002, “Humiliation, Dignity, and Self-Respect,” Philosophical Psychology, 13: 523–
540.



Strike, K., 1980, “Education, Justice, and Self-Respect: A School for Rodney Dangerfield,”
Philosophy of Education, 35: 41–49.



Szabados, B., 1989–90, “Embarrassment and Self-Esteem,” Journal of Philosophical Research, 15:
341–349.



Taylor, C., 1989, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.



Taylor, G., 1985, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment, Oxford: Oxford University
Press; excerpts reprinted in Dignity, Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge,
1995.



Telfer, E., 1968, “Self-Respect,” The Philosophical Quarterly, 18: 114–121; reprinted in Dignity,
Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



Thomas, L., 2003, “Self-Respect, Fairness, and Living Morally,” in A Companion to African
American Philosophy, T. Lott (ed.), Malden, MA: Blackwell.



–––, 2001b, “The Moral Self in the Face of Injustice,” in Social and Political Philosophy:
Contemporary Perspectives, J.P. Sterba (ed.), London: Routledge.



–––, 2000, “Moral Psychology,” in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, H. LaFollete (ed.),
Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.



–––, 1989, Living Morally: A Psychology of Moral Character, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.



–––, 1983a, “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice,” in Philosophy Born of Struggle: Anthology of AfroAmerican Philosophy from 1917, L. Harris (ed.), Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company; reprinted in Dignity,
Character, and Self-Respect, R.S. Dillon (ed.), New York: Routledge, 1995.



–––, 1983b, “Morality, the Self, and Our Natural Sentiments,” in Emotion: Philosophical Studies,
K.D. Irani and G.E. Meyers (eds.), New York: Haven Publishing Corp.



–––, 1982, “Law, Morality, and Our Psychological Nature,” in Social Justice, M. Bradie and D.
Braybrooke (eds.), Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy.



–––, 1980, “Sexism and Racism: Some Conceptual Differences,” Ethics, 90: 239–250.



–––, 1979, “Capitalism vs. Marx's Communism,” Studies in Soviet Thought, 20: 57–79.



–––, 1978, “Morality and Our Self-Concept,” Journal of Value Inquiry, 12: 258–268.



–––, 1978–79, “Rawlsian Self-Respect and the Black Consciousness Movement,” The Philosophical
Forum, 9: 303–314.



Van Leeuwen, B., 2007, “A Formal Recognition of Social Attachment: Expanding Axel Honneth's
Theory of Recognition,” Inquiry, 50: 180-205.



Vlastos, G., 1962, “Justice and Equality,” in Social Justice, R. Brandt (ed.), Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.



Weil, S., 1972, The Need for Roots, London: Routledge& Kegan Paul.



–––, 1965, Seventy Letters, Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Wisnewski, J., 2009, “What We Owe the Dead,” Journal of Applied Philosophy, 26: 54–70.



Wong, D.B., 1984, Moral Relativity, Berkeley: University of California Press.



Worsfold, V.L., 1988, “Educating for Self-Respect,” Philosophy of Education, 44: 258–269.



Yanal, R.J., 1987, “Self-Esteem,” Noûs, 21: 363–379.

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